


kings and queens

by mandaestella



Category: Actor RPF, Alexbelle, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, The Hunger Games (Movies), The Hunger Games (Movies) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, Friends With Benefits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-11-03 21:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 52,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17885915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandaestella/pseuds/mandaestella
Summary: alex and isabelle have been best friends for four years, ever since their freshman year of college. now they've gotten jobs in a big city, and they have to attempt to navigate adulthood. at least they have each other, but when their friendship turns into something more, things get a whole lot more complicated.





	1. let your world be wide open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> / let your world be wide open  
> / and your fears be blown apart  
> / may your voice be louder than bombs  
> / somewhere in silence find one to trust  
> / lift your head up  
> / untie the knot  
> / my little sunshine  
> / hope is never light years away  
> the unknown by athlete

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi,
> 
> this is incredibly self-indulgent and long and ridiculous and i'm so sorry. disclaimers: i have done little to no research on any of the marine biology stuff in here, so i'm sure it's all very off base and if we can ignore that, that would be great.
> 
> p.s. please let me know where you stand on the flip cup vs. tippy cup debate because that would end a lot of fights amongst my friend group. 
> 
> xxxx  
> a

They had always known they were going to move far away. And they had always known it would be the two of them, moving away together.

Alexander Ludwig and Isabelle Fuhrman had been inseparable for four years, ever since their freshman year of college at the University of Minnesota. They had met during the first week of school at orientation for the honors program, and they hadn’t left each other’s side since. Isabelle wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, how they slotted into each other’s lives so easily and so quickly. One morning she was just a scared eighteen-year-old, a state away from home, and one morning she was texting Alex to meet her for breakfast, not even assuming that the answer would be something other than yes.

He was her best friend, her home away from home, the love of her life. So it was no surprise to anyone that when Alex got a job in Miami after graduation, Isabelle wasn’t far behind.

Alex was the quintessential California boy. He grew up surfing, perpetually had a tan even in the dead of winter, and was going to be a marine biologist. Why he chose to go to Minnesota to get that degree would forever confuse Isabelle, but she wasn’t complaining. “I wanted a change,” he told Isabelle that first week over dinner at the cafeteria. “Something different.” Isabelle, who had grown up in the Midwest and was used to the biting cold of winter, thought he might change his mind come December. He didn’t.

And now, four years later, they were sitting in the kitchen at Isabelle’s dad’s house in Madison, Wisconsin, tracing out their route to Miami.

“We have to go through Chicago,” Alex said, grabbing the pen out of Isabelle’s hand. He insisted they look at a physical map, his deep distrust of Google Maps manifesting in a very annoying way.

“That’s stupid, Alex,” she said, grabbing the pen back and simultaneously kicking him in the shin. “That’ll just add on time.”

“Like an hour.”

“It’s already twenty-two. We’ll have killed each other by the end of it.”

“Nah.” He propped his elbow up on the table, shooting that big grin at her and making her forget what they were arguing about. That’s how he won all of their disagreements. “You couldn’t get sick of me if you tried.”

“Well, I sure hope not,” she said. “Considering now you’re really stuck with me.”

There hadn’t been much of a discussion about their post-graduate plans. Alex had told Isabelle the second he started applying to jobs, all of them in faraway places like San Diego or Maine or Miami. So she started looking too. She was lucky; they needed vet assistants everywhere. Her options were wide open, dictated only by the cities Alex had his sights set on.

They flew down to Miami for their interviews the same week, shortly after walking across the stage at graduation. Alex was back in California for a couple of days when Isabelle got the call, telling her she had the job and they wanted her to start on the first of June. She called him immediately, but before she could even get the words out, he was screaming into the phone. He had gotten the job too. And it was official - they were going to Miami.

They only had a couple of weeks to get everything figured out. They flew back down to Miami, went apartment hunting for a couple of days, Alex keeping careful track of every place they saw, the pros and cons, the rent, the proximity to the ocean, and a million other factors that he really, really cared about. Isabelle didn’t; all she cared about was being there. Eventually, he decided on one, going back and forth between two places before Isabelle forced him to pick one upon pain of death.

“Look,” Alex said, grabbing the pen one last time and holding it out of her reach, waiting for her to stop making a grab for it. Once she did, he put it to the map, tracing a path from Madison to Chicago, through Indiana and Kentucky, skirting the edge of Asheville, North Carolina and zig-zagging over to the coast. “Once we hit South Carolina, we can just ride the coast all the way down.” He looked at her, eyes big. “Come on, Fuhrman. It’s longer, but it’ll be worth it.”

She couldn’t say no to him, sighing. “Okay, Alex. You win.”

He always did.

The next morning they were loading up Alex’s Jeep with luggage and boxes and blankets and pillows. “God, Fuhrman,” Alex said, grunting as he picked up her shoe suitcase. “Why couldn’t you have sent these with the rest of our shit?”

“You said not to ship the important stuff,” she said, parroting his own words back to him. “You told me to pack the important stuff so that we could bring it in the Jeep. And my shoes are what is important to me. Thank you so much.”

He glared at her as he whipped her suitcase into the back of the Jeep, but he wasn’t really mad at her. He couldn’t be.

Isabelle was hands down the better driver, especially in the city. Alex got too distracted too easily, looking around at the buildings and the people and missing his exit or taking a detour for a hot dog. “I did that one time, Fuhrman,” he whined when she brought it up. “And it was a really good hot dog. You’re a better person for having that hot dog, and yet you use it against me.”

Needless to say, Isabelle would be the one driving them through Chicago. They said good-bye to her dad, and he clapped Alex on the shoulder, making the usual dad noises about taking care of his little girl and texting him when they got there. Before long, they were off, the sun warm over their heads and the breeze coming in through the open windows. She looked over at Alex as they pulled out of her dad’s neighborhood, the sun shining off his hair and lighting up his face. They were off.

They drove through the day without stopping, a straight twelve hours until they made it to Asheville. Alex had booked a cottage about ten miles off the interstate, and they rolled in as the sun was starting to set. Alex, who had taken over the driving once they got through Indianapolis, pushed the door of the Jeep open, cracking his back before he got out.

“I’m getting too old for this,” he said, his voice rough from hours of yelling over the radio and open windows.

“You turned twenty-three two weeks ago.”

“Shut up, Fuhrman.”

They collapsed onto the queen beds in cottage six, falling asleep before they even managed to turn out the lights.

Twelve hours later, they were nearing Miami, sixteen hundred miles from where they had first started. Isabelle pulled up outside their apartment, parallel parking as best as she could in front of the high rise smack in the middle of Little Havana, palm trees lining the street and only three miles from the ocean, a straight shot down the block. It was a far cry from Minneapolis, and they were paying an exorbitant amount of money for it, but it was what Alex had wanted.

Their stuff had beaten them there, the giant shipping container taking up most of the sidewalk space outside the building. Alex sent Isabelle in to talk to their new rental company, unlocking the pod and opening it, a mountain of stuff immediately falling out into a pile on the street. “Do you need help?” Isabelle asked when she came back outside to see him sprawled on his back on the sidewalk, t-shirt discarded next to him, sweat already dripping down his neck.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, looking up at her. “Did you get the keys?”

She dangled them in front of his face, and he jumped up, snatching them from her and slamming the door of the pod shut. “Let’s go up.”

Their apartment was on the seventh floor, overlooking the pool. They had a balcony the size of a postage stamp, which was what had really sold Alex on the place. Isabelle was just glad he had gone with a place that had two bathrooms.

Alex unlocked the door, swinging his other arm around Isabelle’s shoulder, pulling her towards him. “Now, Fuhrman,” he said, turning to her, one hand on the doorknob, holding it closed. “Are you ready?”

She looked up at him, waiting. “For… what?”

He grinned at her. “The rest of our lives.”

She rolled her eyes at him, pushing at the door fruitlessly. “Come on, Alex. Open the door.”

He let it swing open, pushing her into the apartment ahead of him. It was small, just two bedrooms with a shared wall and a couple of bathrooms, the living room and the kitchen, but it was full of light and it was all theirs. They had an immediate scuffle for the bigger bedroom, Isabelle winning, although she knew she only won because Alex let her.

“Enjoy it, Fuhrman!” he yelled through the wall.

“Oh, I will.”

“Wow,” he said, poking his head out of his room and looking over at her. “You can really hear everything through this wall, huh?”

They barely managed to get Isabelle’s mattress into the elevator. “Why do you need a king-sized bed anyways?” Alex grunted, smashed up against the wall. “You’re the tiniest person I’ve ever met.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes at him, trying to shimmy underneath the mattress to press the button for their floor. “Once you get a king-sized bed, you’ll never go back. It’s a blessing and a curse.”

The elevator doors slid back on their floor, Alex pushed the mattress out into the hall where it immediately hit someone.

“Oh, shit, ow!”

“Alex!” Isabelle hissed, realizing that they had just shoved her mattress into someone. “I’m so sorry.” She hopped over the mattress, pulling Alex out of the elevator behind her. There was a small redhead in front of them, rubbing her shoulder. “We’re kind of a hot mess.”

The girl smiled at them, even as she was wincing. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve all been there. These elevators suck.” She held out her hand. “I’m Jackie.”

“Isabelle,” she said, taking it and gesturing behind her. “This is Alex. We’re moving into 701.”

“Oh!” Jackie said. “My boyfriend and I are right across the hall from you.” She glanced at her watch. “And I’m so sorry but I’m already, like, a half hour late to meet him so I’ve got to run.” She reached past Isabelle, hitting the down button. “But I can stop over later if you need help!”

Just as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone.

“Nice job, Alex,” Isabelle said, hitting his shoulder. “What a great first impression.”

“Your mattress, your problem.”

They managed to get all of the big pieces of furniture into the apartment over the next few hours, even if just barely avoiding a “PIVOT!” moment trying to get the couch up the stairs. “Can we take a break?” Alex asked, stripping his shirt off and collapsing onto the floor in the kitchen. Isabelle shut the door behind her, checking her phone on the counter to see if her dad had texted her back. “Come here,” Alex said, holding his hand out to her and pulling her down to the floor next to him.

The cool tile of the floor felt good against her legs, and she settled herself in between Alex’s knees. He pulled her back against his chest, the fridge humming behind them, and draped his arms around her shoulders, resting his chin on top of her head.

“I love you, Fuhrman,” he said, letting out a heavy sigh, and she could feel his chest moving up and down against her as he breathed. “I’m glad I’m doing this with you.”

She closed her eyes, wrapping her fingers around his wrist. “Me too.”

* * *

Alex had grown up in San Diego, surrounded by sun and surf and sea creatures. It had never been a question in his mind that someday he would be a marine biologist, even when he was five years old and had no idea what that actually meant. He had gone on different study abroad trips every summer since he had graduated high school, switching his focus from killer whales to turtles to manatees to dolphins, but never changing his mind.

He knew he was lucky, knowing exactly what he wanted to do so fiercely. And he was even luckier than he got a job as a research associate at the University of Miami’s marine biology program straight out of college. He was going to get paid to study dolphins, and he couldn’t imagine anything better.

The cherry on top was that Isabelle was here with him. She was, hands down, the best thing in his life, his closest friend and the one person he told absolutely everything to. He had wanted to ask her to come to Miami with him, thought it might be presumptuous and was trying to work up the nerve when she informed him that she had already applied for jobs there. The girl could read his mind, and he was a better person for it.

He spent the morning of his first day of work throwing up in the toilet. Thank God they had more than one bathroom. Their rooms shared a wall, and even though they had only been there for a week, they knew from experience that they could hear every single thing the other person was doing on the other side of the wall, Isabelle spending most of her early mornings screaming at Alex to turn his music down before she killed him.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
6:26 a.m.  
are you in the bathroom with the  
lights off?

Alexander Ludwig  
6:26 a.m.  
why do you care

Alexander Ludwig  
6:26 a.m.  
i’m a grown man

He was trying to be as quiet as possible, but it was no use. Isabelle came flying into the bathroom, practically tripping over him. She stopped herself just in time, sitting down on the edge of the tub and putting a glass of water down on the floor next to him. “How are you feeling?”

“Great,” he said dully. “Do I look good?”

She smoothed her hand over his forehead. “Never.” He glared up at her.

Alex was in the middle of another round of throwing up when Jackie burst into the bathroom. She wasn’t as graceful, tripping over Alex’s legs and sending both her and Isabelle flying into Alex’s bathtub, knocking everything off the ledge on their way down. Alex rested his cheek on the toilet seat, looking at them. “You guys are really making this easy for me.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Jackie said breathlessly, pushing herself out of the tub and yanking Isabelle up with her, settling them on the ledge. She picked up Alex’s shampoo bottles and soap as she talked, stacking them back neatly onto the side of the tub. “I just wanted to say good luck.”

Alex sat up, leaning back against the tub and putting his head in Isabelle’s lap, grabbing the water off the floor and downing half of it. “Thanks, Jackie,” he said. “I may not sound like it but I do appreciate that.”

He was scared. Not anxious, not nervous, not stressed… scared. He had been up all night, tossing and turning, couldn’t get out of his own head, and the more he thought about the next day the more scared he got. He wound himself up so much that he ended up on his bathroom floor at four in the morning, trying to be sick as quietly as possible.

“You’re going to be great,” Jackie said, pulling a piece of toast wrapped in a napkin out of the pocket of her sweatshirt, handing it to him. “Eat this and you’ll feel better.”

Jackie had been a near-constant fixture in their apartment since their first night there. When they had first met her in the hallway, she seemed like something of a tornado, and Alex was convinced that they would never see her again. But that night there was a knock on the door, and when he opened it, there she stood, breezing past him into the apartment like she owned the place, dumping a bag of Doritos and a fifth of Jack Daniels on the counter.

She stayed up with Isabelle all night, organizing her room and downing Natty Light because that was, for some reason, the only beer Alex could find. He ended up passing out in a pile of clothes around two o’clock, woke up the next morning to find them still at it, Jackie drunk and screaming “does this spark joy?”

She was a nurse at Jackson Memorial, and her work schedule was scattered, which meant that more often than not, Alex woke up to Jackie sitting at his kitchen table or standing at the stove making cheesy eggs. Her boyfriend, Jack, had also become a regular in their home. He did something with stocks and day trading that Alex didn’t understand and probably never would, no matter how many times Jack tried to explain it to him. He had taken to coming over every night after work, playing Xbox with Alex and flicking peanut shells at Isabelle when she was trying to play Slices.

Alex took the toast from Jackie, nibbling on the corner of it and trying to gauge how his stomach was feeling. “Is he always like this?” Jackie hissed to Isabelle.

“I can very clearly hear you, Jackie. You’re a foot away from me.”

She rolled her eyes at him, checking the time on her phone. “I’ve got to run,” she said, standing up and kissing Isabelle’s cheek. “Alex, I’m not gonna kiss you cause you just threw up everywhere, but you’re gonna kill it and I’ll see you tonight.”

Jackie was always in motion, constantly checking her watch and running out the door. She picked up shifts whenever she could, saying that she got herself into trouble when she had too much free time. The reality was that the girl had no free time; she was addicted to the hospital. Even Alex could tell, and he had only known her for about a week.

“Come on, Alex,” Isabelle said finally, letting him sit there for another few minutes to finish his toast and contemplate going back to California. “You don’t want to be late on your first day.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Alex said, feeling like his head was spinning at the mere thought of standing up. “You’ve already started.”

Isabelle’s first day at Silver Bluff Animal Hospital had been Saturday, two days before. She had been just as nervous as Alex was now, he knew, but her anxiety manifested itself as incessant cooking and cleaning, not vomiting, so he couldn’t help but feel that she was the one coming out on top.

“Get up,” she said, yanking him to his feet with surprising force for such a tiny person. He put a hand on his shoulder, holding himself steady as he reached around behind her to turn on the shower.

Alex sighed, twisting the end of her braid around his hand. “Thank you, my love.” He closed his eyes, kissing her forehead and smelling the top of her head. For some reason, it always calmed him down, no matter what the crisis happened to be.

He dropped Isabelle at the animal hospital on his way to the university, and she skipped around to his side, kissing him on the cheek. He held onto that feeling as he drove the fifteen minutes across the causeway, the ocean passing him on both sides and a warm breeze running through the open air of the Jeep. It was a perfect day and he was in a perfect place and everything was going to be just fine.

The aquarium appeared quickly on his right as he got off the causeway, circling around towards the marine science building. The school took up most of the south end of the Virginia key; the only other things on the island were a couple of restaurants and a state park, stretching out of sight on the other side of the causeway.

There was a blonde girl waiting for him in the parking lot when he pulled into his spot. Her name was Luca Bella Facinelli, and she was the other dolphin associate at the school. He had met her briefly after his second interview, and he was instantly struck by how much she reminded him of Isabelle: bright and full of life with a personality big enough to rival her name.

She was already talking a mile a minute as he got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him and reaching over the open side to grab his backpack out of the back seat. He immediately felt better, more relaxed, knowing that she would be there to help him if he started to fall apart. He followed her through the front doors of the building, past the giant maps of the ocean and coral reef displays, through another set of doors and down a back hallway.

It started to smell salty and fresh with just a hint of fishiness, the smell Alex grew up with, and it put him even more at ease. “I figured since it’s your first day we should do something fun,” Luca said, turning to him with a big smile. “Why don’t you go shove all your shit in the office and then we can go meet the girls?”

Alex felt his heart jump at the thought, and he definitely didn’t need to be told twice. Alex and Luca had both been hired to spearhead a dolphin project at the university. They had everything from marine genomics to coral reef futures to an experimental hatchery, but they hadn’t done much with dolphins. It was Alex’s job to change that. Luca had beat him there by about six months, and the program was still a baby. He could do whatever he wanted with it.

It was a tiny office with a little window looking out at the ocean, Luca’s desk pushed right up against his, back to back, but it was his and that was something. Alex had gone through a period of crippling self-doubt - well, a couple of them actually - the closer and closer he got to graduation, convinced that he was a hack and that no one would hire him. And yet, here he was.

Luca was bouncing up and down in the doorway excitedly. “We can do all the administrative crap later,” she said. “I want you to see them.”

She shoved him into the locker room, pointing out the wet suits and telling him to hurry. He went as quickly as he could, his heart beating out of his chest. His hands were shaking, and it took him a couple of tries to zip up, but before long he was standing next to Luca on the deck, looking out at the lagoon.

Luca had been emailing him pictures of the dolphins for a couple of weeks now; the university currently had three. All of the dolphins were rescues and would at some point be released back into the ocean. Until then, they were entirely the responsibility of Alex and Luca.

She leaned down on the concrete, putting her hand in the water. Before long, three dark gray shapes were streaking through the water, coming towards them. As they popped their heads out of the water, Alex knelt down beside Luca, holding out his hand. “Oh my God,” he said, his voice low, and Luca turned and grinned at him.

“It’s crazy, right?”

Alex had worked with dolphins before. He had spent the summer before his senior year of college back home in San Diego working with a dolphin rescue. But this was the first time that he had ever been in charge, and he wasn’t sure it was ever going to stop feeling surreal.

“This one is Glimmer,” Luca said, pointing to the one on the left and tossing a fish into her open mouth. Glimmer had been hit by a boat, and Alex could see the deep gashes in her tail as it moved underneath the water. They had just rescued her a couple of months before, the response team getting a call in the middle of the night and heading out to get her.

The dolphin in the middle chirped at them. “And this is Clove,” Luca said. “She needs a lot of attention.” Clove was smaller than Glimmer, moving from side to side and nudging Alex’s knee with her nose. He put his hand on the top of her head, feeling her skin like velvet under his palm. Clove had likely been abandoned when she was still a baby; she had been at the university for a few months after someone spotted her in the ocean off Redington Beach. She had been incredibly weak and malnourished, and Luca had been evaluating her since her rescue to see if she would be okay to be released.

“And this one?” Alex asked, turning to the last dolphin.

“Cressida,” Luca said. “She was the one caught up in the rope. We’re keeping her in now because she’s pregnant.”

Alex sat back on his heels, watching Luca with the girls. She had grown up in Florida, spent a lot of time around dolphins, and you could tell just looking at her that she was a natural. She certainly looked the part: tan, freckles splashed lightly across her nose, blonde hair falling down her back in a braid. She looked like every girl Alex had ever fallen for.

He shook that thought out of his brain as quickly as it came.

* * *

“Beach day!” It was the first day he had gotten to sleep in since he had started his job on Monday, and he was being rudely awoken. Jackie Emerson did not understand subtlety. “Beach day, beach day, beach day!”

Alex groaned, rolling over and burrowing beneath his pillow. “What time is it?”

There was a pause as Jackie looked at her watch. “Eight o’clock.”

“Jackie!” He sat up, throwing the pillow at her. “Come the fuck on!”

She sat back, grinning at him. “Hey, you agreed to this.”

“I agreed to beach day. I thought that meant at a normal time. Like noon.”

She reached over his head, barely missing planting a knee in his liver. He rolled over quickly to get out of her way, looking up at her as she yanked on the shades, letting sun into the room. “Is he up?” he could hear Isabelle yelling from the other side of the wall.

“Barely,” Jackie screeched back, and Alex lunged at her. They had a scuffle on the bed, Alex trying desperately to smother her with a pillow. Isabelle came in a few seconds later, pulling him off of her and shoving him towards the bathroom.

“Come on, Alex,” she yelled after him as he slammed the door petulantly. “It’s a miracle Jackie and I are both getting a Saturday off, and you’re gonna fucking enjoy it!”

Bossy.

They had been in Miami for two weeks, started their jobs a week ago. Everything felt good, like how it was supposed to. They were real adults now. Even so, Alex was glad Isabelle had Jackie. He could hear her crying through the wall sometimes at night, knew she missed her dad and her dog. Every time he heard it, he knocked on her door quietly, pushing it open and crawling into bed next to her, putting his arms around her and letting her cry into his shoulder.

There was no trace of that energy now as he got done in the bathroom, heading out to the kitchen to see the two of them waiting for him impatiently, Jackie actually tapping her foot. “Calm down, Emerson,” he said, rolling his eyes and throwing himself down at the counter. “Where’s Jack?”

“Working,” she said. “Always. He said he might be able to meet us later.”

“Oh, come on. He’s always working.”

Jackie whipped around, pinning him down with her gaze. “You’re gonna complain about that to me? His girlfriend? Who sits at home alone most nights?”

“You don’t sit home alone. You sit in my living room and force me to watch Vanderpump Rules.”

“Fair enough. But don’t act like you don’t love Vanderpump Rules.”

He shrugged, grabbing a doughnut from the box on the counter. Having Jackie around was great for a lot of reasons, but topping the list was the fact that she almost never came over empty handed. “You have five seconds to eat that,” Isabelle said from where her head was buried in the refrigerator. She was dropping things into the cooler at her feet. “Because I’m almost done here.”

“Isabelle,” Alex said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the counter, shoving the last bite of his doughnut in his mouth. “What’s going to happen if we don’t get to the beach right at nine o’clock.” She turned around, a beer in each hand. “Will you die?”

“No.” She raised her eyebrow at him. “But you might.”

He grabbed his surfboard from where it was propped up behind his bedroom door, changing into his swimsuit and grabbing his phone, checking for a message from Luca before shoving it into his pocket. He had valiantly resisted the urge to drunk text her the night before even though, for some reason, he couldn’t get her off his mind. There was nothing waiting for him in his messages, and he hurried out into the living room before Isabelle started yelling.

They were only just down the street from the beach, a couple of blocks away, and they piled into the Jeep for the ride, pulling out of the underground garage, Alex’s surfboard shoved in the back. It was a beautiful day, not too hot, the sky clear and bright above them. They’d been here for a couple of weeks now and hadn’t been to the beach yet, so no matter how much Alex complained that he had to get up early, he was excited.

The three of them picked their way through the sand, Isabelle and Jackie spreading out their towels and throwing down their bags, tubes of sunscreen and magazines and sunglasses spilling out everywhere. Alex went back to the car for the cooler, settling it down into the sand between the two of them. He turned, looking out at the ocean, spread out in front of him. This was what he had been waiting for.

Luca Bella Facinelli  
9:02 a.m.  
The girls miss you!  
Attached: 1 Image

Alexander Ludwig  
9:02 a.m.  
are you sure they’re the only ones? ;)

Luca Bella Facinelli  
9:03 a.m.  
I don’t know what you’re talking  
about, Ludwig

Luca Bella Facinelli  
9:03 a.m.  
What are you up to today?

Alexander Ludwig  
9:05 a.m.  
surfing... beach… probably some more  
surfing

Luca Bella Facinelli  
9:05 a.m.  
Such a California boy! Have fun.  
I’ll tell the girls you say hi.

Alex dropped his phone on the towel next to Isabelle, attempted to make the stupid grin on his face a little less obvious. Over the past week, he had spent about sixty hours with Luca, and it was not a bad place to be. She was funny and good with the dolphins and really, really, really smart. She could talk about the girls all day long, her face lighting up when she did, and he could sit there and listen to her for hours. It was mainly just the two of them, getting there early and staying late after everyone else went home.

It was early but the beach was starting to fill up; Alex wouldn’t admit it to her, but Isabelle was right. It was a good thing they had gotten there when they did. The sand was full of people sprawled out on towels, kids building sand castles, guys playing football in the surf. Alex pulled his shirt over his head, dropping it onto Isabelle’s back just to piss her off.

“I’ll be back,” he said to the girls, grabbing his board and heading towards the water.

The surfing was great. It wasn’t California, but it was exactly what he had missed over the last four years in Minnesota. He stayed out there for an hour, looking back over at Jackie and Isabelle every now and then to make sure they hadn’t gotten snatched.

Eventually he decided to take a break, flopping down on Isabelle’s towel and swinging a wet arm over her back. “How was it?” she asked, turning to look at him.

“So great.” He grinned at her. “Have you been reading or just looking for someone to bang?”

“Hey!” She glanced over at Jackie, smirking, and he knew he was right. “Maybe I want a relationship.”

“Do you?”

“No. But I could.”

Alex pushed himself up on his elbows, looking around. “What about…” He scanned the beach. “What about that guy?” He pointed at one of the guys playing football down by the water.

She tilted her head, looking over her shoulder. “Mmm… maybe. Seems a little too fratty for my taste.”

“Okay. How about…” He squinted in the bright sun, trying not to make the fact that he was blatantly staring at people so completely obvious. “That girl.”

Isabelle looked in the direction he was tilting his head, shaking hers. “You know I like my girls blonde. Try again.”

“God, you are picky.” He kept pointing people out as they walked by, Jackie joining in the fun. Some of their choices were ridiculous; some were spot on. He had just pointed out a tiny red headed girl to which Isabelle took great offense.

“Gross, Alex, that would be exactly like dating Jackie.”

“You know, I would pay to see that.”

They were yelling at him in unison to shut the fuck up when he saw a girl heading towards the water with a surfboard. She was blonde and tan and tiny, probably a couple of inches shorter than Isabelle. Alex figured he had laid there long enough.

“That’s my cue,” he said, grabbing his board again and leaving the girls behind.

* * *

“So what’s the deal with you two anyways?” Jackie asked Isabelle once Alex had left, running back towards the ocean to surf and try to hit on that girl who was way, way, way out of his league. Isabelle watched him go, turning back to Jackie and pushing her sunglasses down on her nose.

Isabelle missed home like crazy. She had known that it would be hard moving out here. She had never been more than a few hours away from her dad, close enough to drive home if she wanted to. And now, not only was she too far away to just drive home, but she didn’t even have a car. It was a big change from college, and it hit her hard, usually at night when she had nothing else to fill her mind.

Having Jackie around was a lifesaver.

They had been attached at the hip since the day Alex and Isabelle had moved into the apartment. She came over every day, flying through the door with food and love and laughter. She tried to Marie Kondo most of Isabelle’s stuff, instead just taking a lot of Isabelle’s clothes for herself and replacing them with her own. She sat in the tub while Isabelle did her makeup for work, showing her Instagram videos of cats playing the piano. She forced Alex to sit down and watch Vanderpump Rules with them, ignoring him completely when he grumbled about it. She was the best girl friend Isabelle had never had in college, and it felt suddenly like her life was complete even if she did get lonely at night.

“What’s the deal with who?”

“You and Alex.”

Isabelle grabbed her water, trying to figure out how to answer the question. “What do you mean? He’s my best friend.”

“Well, duh.” Jackie rolled her eyes at her. “A blind mouse could see that. But I mean… you two never dated or anything?”

“No.” Isabelle’s answer was quick. “No, never.”

“Because I totally thought you guys were, like, a couple when I met you.”

“And how long did that last?”

“About an hour. Until he started talking about getting it in right in front of you, and I figured that that might be a little much for a relationship, even for the two of you.”

“Exactly.” Isabelle said, sitting up and grabbing the sunscreen, spreading some more out over her arms. “He’s Alex. He’s completely undateable.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“I mean, I’ve seen dozens of girls try to date him. It never works out for them.”

“Alright.” Jackie sat up, grabbing the sunscreen and smoothing it over Isabelle’s back, handing it to her when she was done. “Now me.”

Isabelle didn’t know how he did it but when they got back to their apartment that night, Alex had a second job and that girl’s phone number. “Wait, what?” Isabelle asked, flopping down on Alex’s bed. Jack had showed up eventually, and he and Alex had started a game of football down by the water, roping in as many people as possible. He hadn’t told Isabelle either piece of news until they were back home in his bedroom. “Start with the job.”

“I’m gonna start with the girl actually because she’s the reason I got the job.”

“Okay.” Isabelle stared up at him as he changed, his back to her. “Start with the girl then.”

Her name was AnnaSophia, and she was a surf instructor. “So basically,” Alex said, pulling his shirt down over his stomach and turning around. “My perfect girl.”

“I thought Luca was your perfect girl.”

“There are lots of girls, Fuhrman. Many of them perfect. Which you should know because you’ve dated some of them.” He collapsed on the bed next to her, slinging his arm over her stomach and shoving his face into her neck. She squirmed away from him, but he just held her tighter.

“Okay. So. Perfect girl is perfect and she got you a job.”

“Yeah, so she’s a surf instructor at this surf shop right on the beach and she was telling me that they were looking for another person on the weekends, and obviously I couldn’t say no.”

“Oh, couldn’t you.”

“Did you see her?”

Isabelle rolled her eyes at him. “You’re doing really well at not breaking the ‘don’t date the people you work with’ rule.”

“That’s your rule. I’ve never pretended to have the same self-control.”

They had been best friends for four years but living together was a whole new ball game. When they first met, they had been in the dorms. Their junior year they both moved into apartments, Isabelle with her sister and Alex with a friend of his, and that was how it had stayed until graduation. They spent most of their time together, but coming home to each other was something new.

Alex was neurotic about how the dishwasher was loaded. One time Isabelle put a fork in upside down and he’d practically bitten her head off. He had no idea how to do laundry; she didn’t have a clue how he had made it through four years of college. He couldn’t cook anything more complicated than grilled cheese. He sang in the shower. He left sand everywhere. He didn’t put the toilet seat down ever, although Isabelle couldn’t really complain about that since at least she didn’t have to share a bathroom with him.

He was also the best roommate she’d ever had, even better than her sister, Madeline. He made her coffee every morning and brought her a beer when she got home at night if he was already there. He came into her room at night when she was crying, doing his best to make her forget why she was sad. He made her laugh. He was kind and considerate and the best thing in her life.

All of those things explained why she couldn’t say no to him when he brought up his idea to have a party a week later.

“Come on, Fuhrman.” He had waited until they were in the car on their way to work, knowing that he had her trapped. “We’ve been here for almost a month-”

“Three weeks.”

“And we don’t know anyone-”

“We know lots of people.”

“And it’ll be just like college.”

“We’re not in college.”

“Fuhrman!” She sighed, pulling her knee up to her chest and twisting a hair tie around her wrist. “It’ll be fun,” he wheedled, reaching over and poking her in the ribs. “Jackie and Jack will come. We can invite Luca and that guy you work with. What’s his name? Mark? And AnnaSophia and Dayo.”

“You want to invite both of the girls you’re dating to the same party.”

“For the thousandth time.” He glared at her as he pulled up to the curb in front of the animal hospital. “I’m not dating either one of them. Nothing has even happened.”

“Yet.”

He shrugged. “I’m taking my time.” She leaned over the seat, grabbing her bag out of the back and pushing the door open. She knew that he was waiting for her to say something.

“Okay, fine. But you owe me a bottle of something.”

“Whatever you want.” He beamed at her. “I’m probably gonna be at the office late tonight. Are you going to make it home okay?”

“Yes, Alexander.” She softened when she saw his face. “I’ll see you tonight.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
12:18 p.m.  
so... we are having a housewarming party.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
12:18 p.m.  
saturday night

Isabelle Fuhrman  
12:18 p.m  
i need you there

Jackie Emerson  
12:52 p.m.  
I thought you’d never ask! I’ve been  
waiting for one of Alex’s infamous  
parties. What should I bring?

Isabelle Fuhrman  
12:59 p.m.  
alcohol. lots of it.

* * *

“So.” Alex leaned over his desk, peering around his computer monitor at Luca. She had her hair tied up, pen in her mouth, and was typing away furiously, trying to get her report done before they both died of old age. She was a fantastic animal trainer, but she hated all of the administrative stuff, leaving it to pile up until they were up against a deadline. Alex couldn’t blame her; being out in the sun in the lagoon was much better than sitting in this office. “What are you doing Saturday?”

She took the pen out of her mouth, shoving it into the Save Our Seas coffee mug in front of her, already stuffed full of pens and paper clips and a few loose Tic-Tacs, and she leaned towards him, putting her elbows on the desk and tilting her head. “Why? You asking me out?”

Alex had been dancing around the question for a couple of weeks now, not wanting to ask her and make things weird. Maybe he should just do it now, but… nah, not the time. “I’m having a party,” he said. “Well, me and my roommate are. You should come.”

“You were a frat boy in college, weren’t you?”

“What?” He made a face like he was offended. “No. Do I look like a frat boy?”

“I could definitely see it.”

“Well…” He leaned back in his chair. “Do you like frat boys?”

She smiled a smile at him that was like sunshine, and for a second he forgot how to speak. “I don’t think so. But I do like you.”

He knew he needed to pull back a little. For one, it was not a good idea to date a coworker. Everyone knew that. Don’t shit where you eat. And for two, he had just turned twenty-three years old. He was in a new city at a new job with a whole new dating pool. Did he really want to get into a relationship right off the bat? Probably not.

But then Luca sat back, shooting him another smile and going back to her report, and he completely forgot all of the reasons that this might not end well.

He left Luca there, finishing up Glimmer’s most recent veterinary log, and he headed through the locker room and out to the lagoon, pulling on a wetsuit on the way. The dolphins were out in the ocean, the open water cut off by some underwater fences, keeping them close enough to call in but giving them enough space to swim freely. He scanned the horizon, looking for them. It had only been a couple of weeks, but he could already tell them apart by the shape of their fins cutting through the water.

Alex pulled a whistle out of the neck of his wetsuit, giving it a couple of short blasts, the sound too high for him to hear. He knelt down by the water, waiting for the girls to come in.

He couldn’t wait to bring Isabelle here. She knew what he did, obviously; she had been his best friend for years after all. But she had never seen it, and he couldn’t wait to show the most important person in his life what he was the most passionate about. He figured that once he got settled in and she got a day off, he would have her come out. Plus he was dying for her to meet Luca. Thank God he wouldn’t have to wait another couple of weeks after that.

Isabelle had never held her tongue when it came to Alex’s girlfriends, nor did he with whoever she was dating, boy or girl. And he had dated some doozies. Nicole, back in their sophomore year of college, had practically torn the two of them apart.

He had met Isabelle the first week of class. They were both in the honors program at the U, and as such they had to go to special orientation. He had just moved into his dorm room the day before, his parents already gone, and after they left he had sat on the tiny double bed and felt like he might throw up. It was the first time he had really been away from home, other than some trips in the summers with his friends or for school. He didn’t know what to do with himself.

Eventually he dragged himself out of his room and to the honors college building. All of the upperclassmen were moving in that day; there were people everywhere, carrying boxes and dragging laundry baskets and yelling and throwing footballs and running across the grass in the square. It was chaotic, and he was grateful for the quiet of the honors building when he stepped inside, the heavy door falling shut behind him.

He looked down at the room number he had written on his hand, scanning the signs on the wall to figure out where to go. He headed down the hallway to his left, taking a deep breath before pushing the door open.

He was early, but there were already a handful of people scattered around the room, all of them jerking their heads up when he opened the door. He smiled stiffly, trying not to make eye contact and slipping into the first seat he saw.

The minutes ticked by, more and more people coming in. Some of them were talking to each other, making Alex feel even more alone. Some of them looked just as nervous as he felt.

Their advisor came in, greeting everyone and setting up a bunch of paperwork on the table at the front of the room. “Okay, hopefully you are all honors students in science programs.” she said, and Alex felt a twinge in his heart at how much she looked like his mom. “Because otherwise you are in the wrong room. Let’s get started.”

The door flew open again, a few last people hurrying in. One of them threw herself down next to Alex, knocking his knee with his backpack. “Sorry, sorry,” she whispered to him, flipping her hair over her shoulder and dropping her bag on the ground.

He turned to say something, tell her it was okay, but she took his breath away.

He got a chance to talk to her just a few minutes later when they were instructed to pair off and learn about the other person. They got off track quickly, moving past hometown and major and favorite food to an argument about which conference was the best in college football.

“You cannot be telling me you think the SEC is better than the Big Ten,” she said loudly, and he snorted.

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Look at Heisman winners. Look at percentage of players who go into the draft. Look at national championships, for fuck’s sake.”

“Um.” Isabelle sat back in her chair, resting her arm on the back of it and narrowing her eyes at him. “Look at consistency. That’s something the SEC is sorely lacking.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

They were let go forty-five minutes later after getting information about their classes and outlines of their majors and schedules to meet with their advisors every week. Alex dreaded going back to his room, dreaded the thought of sitting in his room alone - or worse, having to make small talk with his roommate. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t a possibility, Isabelle following him out of the room and immediately starting to argue with him again.

“Think about it. The Big Ten has… what… forty national titles? That’s more than the SEC.”

“By like two. And they didn’t win anything between 2002 and 2014. Because the SEC swept.”

She rolled her eyes at him. He didn’t know how it happened, but they ended up going to dinner together that night and then every night, throwing in breakfast and lunch too. Alex fell in love with her immediately, rarely leaving her side.

She came to his dorm room every night, sitting in his desk chair and eating cookie dough straight out of the container and watching him play Madden. They argued about football (and everything else). They went to football games and diversity events and the gym together. They played intramural soccer together. Alex took Isabelle to her first big college party, holding onto her hand the whole time to make sure she was okay. He took care of her when she got drunk for the first time, holding her hair back when she threw up and sitting with her the next day when she was hungover. They studied together, went to class together, slept in the same bed. He loved this girl with all his heart.

Her opinion had always meant more to him than anyone’s. He just wanted to make her proud.

The dolphins came flying into the lagoon, pulling him off of memory lane, and he got to work.

When he got home on Saturday afternoon, Isabelle and Jackie were in full party-planning mode. She had seemed hesitant about it at first; Alex knew she was just tired and stressed and homesick, but now she actually seemed excited. That was all thanks to Jackie, he was sure.

“Holy shit,” he said, throwing his backpack on one of the stools at the counter. “Did you guys buy every cup they had?”

Jackie tossed her hair. “If we’re gonna play flip cup and beer pong and king’s cup then we need a lot of cups.”

“Fair. But it’s tippy cup.”

“It’s what now?”

“Tippy cup.”

“Like hell it is. It’s flip cup.”

“Don’t even start with him,” Isabelle said from where she was setting up the beer pong table on the balcony, the door flung wide open and the breeze from the ocean rolling into the apartment. “He could argue with you about this for days. And he will.”

Jackie had really gone all out, stringing Christmas lights up around the ceiling of their apartment, the fridge full of Jello shots, and the counter practically buckling under the weight of all of the liquor bottles she had piled on top of it. There was beer in the coolers out on the balcony, stacks of cups everywhere, and about ten bags of Doritos, Jackie’s go-to snack.

“It looks great, Emerson,” he said, pulling his shirt off as he went into his room to shower.

“Can you wait until you get into your room to undress?” she yelled after him. “We don’t all want to see that!”

“Yes, you certainly do!”

He got in the shower, letting the hot water wash off the sweat and grime and fish guts that he had picked up at the aquarium. He had spent the morning working with Clove; Luca was worried that she wasn’t getting any better. She was playful and smart and sweet, but she had no survival skills and she wasn’t demonstrating anything that would make Alex think that she could make it on her own. And he didn’t think he could teach them to her. They had to come from her mother, and she didn’t have one of those.

It was frustrating. He didn’t want to send her back out into the ocean just to die, but he was strongly against keeping her in captivity for the rest of her life, and so was Luca. They had a lot to figure out still.

By the time he got out of the shower, Dayo was there, AnnaSophia behind him. Dayo was the owner of the surf shop, and Alex had met him on his first day there, taking an instant liking to him. Isabelle and Jackie had already grabbed AnnaSophia, pulling her into the kitchen with them, and Alex just shrugged, grabbing a beer for Dayo from one of the coolers.

An hour later, the party was in full swing: people were everywhere. Luca had showed up, a bottle of Fireball in tow. Isabelle’s coworker Mark was there, joining Dayo and Alex and Jack out on the balcony and immediately starting a beer pong tournament, complete with a bracket. Jackie had invited a bunch of people from the hospital and her gym and apparently just off the street, judging by how many people they had packed in there.

Jackie was in control of the aux cord, and Isabelle had set up shop over by the counter, acting as an amateur bartender. The girl couldn’t make a drink to save her life, but she could pour three fingers of rum into a plastic cup and top it off with a splash of Coke, which was really all they required. AnnaSophia was next to her, sitting on top of the counter, leg swinging, and her head was tilted back as she laughed at something Isabelle was saying. Alex kept glancing at her, trying not to make it too obvious, but something about her was magnetic.

And then there was Luca, who had been flitting back and forth between him and the girls all night. At first, she had been glued to his side, which he didn’t mind in the slightest, but count on Jackie and Isabelle to steal her away too. He was going to have some words with them later about that.

“You’re up, Alex,” Mark said, chucking a ping pong ball at his head. It bounced off his shoulder and over the edge of the balcony, falling seven stories down to the street. Alex watched it go, turning to look at Mark, who just shrugged. “Should’ve caught it.”

“Should’ve thrown it better,” Alex said, leaning into the living room. “Fuhrman! Can you throw me another ping pong ball?” She didn’t answer, had her back to him as she leaned close to Luca to say something into her ear. “Fuhrman! Fuhrman! Fuhrman! Fuhrman!”

“What, Alex?” she shrieked, spinning around and glaring at him, yelling at him over the heads of the twenty-five people in between them. “What the fuck do you want?”

He smiled sweetly at her. “Ping pong ball.” She whipped a pack of them across the room at him, and he barely managed to snag it with one hand before it too went flying off the balcony. “Thank you!” he yelled back, and she stuck her tongue out at him, turning back to Luca.

Alex and Dayo lost the beer pong tournament to Luca and Jackie spectacularly, the final game ending with one cup left on each side. People crowded out onto the balcony until it was completely full, everyone else hanging out the window as Luca took the shot, the ball flying into the last cup with a satisfying splash. Jackie practically flipped the table, jumping up and down and shrieking and hugging Luca.

Alex raised his cup at her, winking at her as he downed the rest of the beer.

He wasn’t going to admit it, but perhaps Isabelle had been right in saying that maybe he shouldn’t have invited both of the girls he was trying to hook up with to the same party. The whole thing was a little overwhelming, and it only became more so the more he drank. Around the second game of tippy cup, he decided not to even try, not wanting the entire night to end in disaster.

By the time they switched to king’s cup, AnnaSophia was sitting on his lap, and Alex was counting on Isabelle and Jackie to keep Luca as distracted as possible. Although, he figured, it probably didn’t really matter, because they were all so smash drunk that no one was really paying attention to anything at this point. It was around one o’clock when the first wave of people began to trickle out the door, about a half hour later for the second wave, leaving Alex behind with Isabelle, Jackie, Jack, Mark, Dayo, Luca, and AnnaSophia.

“True American?” Isabelle asked, popping open another beer.

“True American.”

If there was one big thing Alex and Isabelle took away from their college experience, it wasn’t their bachelor’s degrees or work experience or even their friendship with each other; it was the drinking game from New Girl called True American. They used to play it in Alex’s apartment, pushing furniture around and yelling and generally just causing a big scene.

Isabelle started setting up the coffee table, plopping a bottle of Jack down in the middle and surrounding it with cans of beer, laid out in lines, and Alex gathered everyone around him to explain. The problem was that he was a little too drunk to be doing any explaining, and everyone else was a little too drunk to understand, even if he was coherent. The game quickly devolved into yelling, as it always did.

Luca ended up winning, jumping from chair to ottoman to couch before balancing herself on the entertainment center and grabbing the bottle of Jack from the middle of the coffee table. There were crushed beer cans everywhere, littering the floor where everyone had been tossing them in the vague direction of the garbage can.

“Well, we’re not going to invite you over anymore if you’re going to just win all the games,” Alex said, jumping down from the back of the recliner.

“Sorry, babe,” she said, winking at him and taking a swig directly out of the bottle. A girl after his own heart.

Dayo, the only one who hadn’t been drinking, yawned hugely. “I think we’re gonna take off,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at AnnaSophia, who was laying on the couch upside down, Isabelle on the floor next to her, both of them giggling at nothing.

Alex nodded, suddenly feeling like he had to lay down or he might fall right over. He turned back to Luca, wondering what his next play was going to be, but Dayo shut that right down. “Mark, Luca, you want a ride?”

She looked at Alex, and he was close enough to see every faint freckle speckled across her nose. His mind was a tad blurry, and he knew somewhere in the back of it that maybe she wanted him to ask her to stay, but he couldn’t get the words out. “I’ll see you Monday?” he said, his voice low.

She put her hand on his shoulder, jumping down from where she was standing. He couldn’t really figure out the look on her face, but she squeezed his hand as she gave him the bottle of Jack, her skin warm against his. “Always,” she said, leaving the apartment with Dayo and AnnaSophia and Mark in a whirl of perfume.

When they were gone, Alex let out a big sigh, falling back onto the couch. “Holy shit,” he said.

“Was I right?” Isabelle asked, sitting up and resting her arms on his knees, looking up at him. “I seem to notice that there are no girls currently naked in your bed, so I would assume that I was right.”

“I have no comment,” he said. He played the last few hours back in his head, knowing that Isabelle was, in fact, one hundred percent right. He pulled on Isabelle’s wrist, tugging her up onto the couch next to him and putting his face in her neck, closing his eyes as she hooked her arm around his neck.

Jackie and Jack went back across the hall to their apartment, their voices fading away in a chorus of carry me, no you carry me. “Come on, Alex,” Isabelle said, trying to stand up, but he had too tight a grip around her waist. “If neither one of us is getting laid tonight, then we should probably just go to bed.”

He didn’t have a good explanation for why he did what he did; it could have been any number of things: the beer, the fact that they were by themselves thousands of miles from home, the amount of time it had been since he had actually been with a girl. He wasn’t thinking about any of the reasons this was a bad idea, that was for sure. But instead of letting Isabelle stand up and pull him to his room, he traced his hand up her side to her face, sliding it underneath the hair at the back of her neck, and he kissed her.

It only lasted a few seconds before she pulled back, planting her hand in the middle of his chest and pushing him away. “Alex,” she said, and her eyes were glassy. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. He was entirely too aware of how close she was to him, her entire side pressed against him, her hand warm on his chest. He dropped his hand from the back of her neck, suddenly realizing the weight of what he had just done. In the four years that they had been friends they had never crossed that line, and he had just jumped right over it with no thought. “I… I’m sorry.”

She was silent for what felt like a long time, although it was probably only a couple of seconds, the moments stretching out longer in his Jack Daniels-soaked brain. He was just about to stand up, awkwardly say good night and go have a wank in the shower, but her words stopped him in his tracks.

“No,” she said, and he looked up at her. She was looking at him, biting her lip, and she swallowed. “Don’t be sorry.”

“Fuhrman, I…”

“Stop talking,” she said. “Let me just… try something.”

He stayed completely silent as she moved towards him, swinging one leg over his lap, straddling him and looking down at him, and he didn’t move as she leaned towards him, her hair swishing over her shoulder and brushing his face. She was so close he could feel her eyelashes against his cheek as she closed her eyes.

When she kissed him, it felt like an explosion, sparks flying behind his eyes, and he couldn’t stay still anymore, rocking forward and grabbing her around the waist, kissing her back. “Holy shit, Fuhrman,” he said, pulling back a couple of inches to try to catch his breath. “Holy shit.”

“I know,” she said. “But we may as well keep going now.” She leaned forward, kissing his neck and working on the button of his jeans, her hands moving between them.

He grunted, leaning his head back against the back of the couch, trying to get the words out. “But you’re… my best friend.”

“Eh, we were never that close,” she said, pulling back to smirk at him, and he got lost in the look in her eyes.

When she sat back, pulling her shirt off over her head, her skin glowing in the light from the moon coming in the window, he forgot every reason he might have had not to keep doing this forever.

* * *

It was not going to happen again.

That’s what Isabelle told herself when she woke up the next morning. It was the same thing she had told Alex the night before, looking up at him when he fisted his hand in her hair as she moved between his legs, pulling her up towards him.

“This is it,” she told him breathlessly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “First and last time.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. His face was flushed. “First and last.”

It wasn’t going to happen again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/mandaestella/playlist/15dXTMax1YkfJCIE9fY3b1?si=d4EWuX5FTW-d7CAQ-axBug


	2. too much pride to make any promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> / don't lie, i know you've been thinking it  
> / and two times you let it slip from your lips  
> / you've got too much pride to make any promises  
> / thinking that we got time and you want to keep it in  
> / i want you out in the pouring rain  
> / i want you down on your knees  
> / praying to god that i feel the same  
> / i'm right here baby so please  
> tie me down by gryffin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, i have nothing to say for myself. also guess how much research i did for this part? the answer is zippity. 
> 
> additionally, the consensus was that it is flip cup and NOT tippy cup, which was absolutely the correct answer so i love y'all for that.
> 
> thank you xxx

It happened again.

Isabelle honestly meant what she had said when she told Alex that it would be their first and last time. Really. She did. But it wasn’t as simple as it sounded when it actually came down to it.

When she woke up the morning after the party, Alex was curled around Isabelle in his bed, the light hitting his face and his arm snug around her. Her head was pounding and she desperately needed to go to the bathroom, but first she had to figure out what the heck was happening.

“Alexander!”

He jerked awake, sitting up and blinking against the sun in his eyes, looking around. “What? What’s going on?”

She rooted around on the floor for her shirt, discarded at some point the night before, trying to keep the blanket tucked against her. “You tell me.”

He flopped back down, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Can we not do this right now? It’s really early and I’m really hungover.”

“Alex.”

“Okay, fine.” He waited for her to pull her tank top over her head before pulling her back down, facing her, head propped up on one arm. “Let’s talk.”

“That… whatever that was between us last night… it was a mistake. And it can’t happen again.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Alex. You’re my best friend. And my roommate. We can’t do stuff like that.”

“Why not?”

“It could get complicated.”

Alex sighed, his eyes trailing down to her lips, and she turned red immediately. He smirked at her. “It didn’t feel all that complicated last night.”

“Can you focus on something other than being a fuckboy for two seconds?”

“I’m not a fuckboy!”

“That sounds like something a fuckboy would say.”

They argued back and forth for a few more minutes before Isabelle got him back on track.

She loved Alex. More than anything. They had never, in the four years of their friendship, explored the idea of being together. They had never kissed. They had never had a close call. There was no reason to break that streak now, any more than it had already been broken. The last thing in the world that she thought she could take would be losing him. So it was up to her to shut it down because he sure wasn’t trying to.

“I hear what you’re saying,” he told her after she finished outlining all the reasons that it couldn’t happen again. “And if that’s what you want, I’m on board.”

“That’s what I want.”

It lasted all of a week.

Isabelle had never before been so aware of Alex’s presence or of how small the apartment actually was. Before the party, she thought nothing of the fact that he would sleep in her bed or walk around with his shirt off or rest his head in her lap while they watched television. But now, every time he touched her, even just in passing, brushing against her trying to get to the coffee maker or bumping her hand grabbing the remote, it felt like her skin was on fire.

Oh, this was not good.

The second time it happened was also substance-induced, so she couldn’t really count that one against them. Alex had gotten weed from Jack, who promised that it was good enough to change his life, and Isabelle came home from working late at the clinic to find him sprawled on the couch in the living room, a bowl packed next to him and The Great British Baking Show on the television.

“Look, Fuhrman,” he said lazily, not even bothering to turn around. “Doesn’t that look good?” He was gesturing at the television where someone was making some sort of donut.

Isabelle snorted. “How much have you had?”

He glanced at the table next to him. “Not nearly enough.”

She dropped her bag on the ground, not even bothering to go into her room and change. She sat down on the floor by Alex’s head, grabbing the bowl off the table and clicking the lighter on, inhaling as it crackled. The smoke hit the back of her throat, hot and dry, and she started coughing immediately, tears coming to her eyes.

“Shit,” Alex said, sitting up so slowly it was like he was underwater, grabbing a jumbo-sized Icee off the floor and handing it to her. She sucked it down gratefully, the coughing eventually subsiding and leaving a burn in her chest. “You okay?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak until her throat stopped hurting. She took another big sip of the Icee, thanking God that Alex remembered how much she craved these whenever she got high. He trained his eyes back on the television and reached over her shoulder to grab the bowl from the table. “Come here.”

Isabelle kicked her shoes off, collapsing onto the couch next to him, careful not to touch him. Alex, apparently, had other ideas.

He took a big hit, leaning forward and grabbing the back of her neck, pressing his mouth to hers and letting go of the smoke. This was nothing new; Alex had been shotgunning pot to her since their freshman year of college, but what was new was the way he looked at her when he pulled back, fire burning behind his eyes.

Things got a little out of hand after that.

The next time it happened they were both stone cold sober and couldn’t blame it on anything but themselves.

“You what?” Jackie shrieked when Isabelle finally told her, sending the whisk she had in one hand flying across the room, brownie batter splattering everywhere.

“Jesus Christ, Jackie!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. But come on. You can’t just drop something like that on me and expect me to be calm about it.”

Alex was at the surf shop, and Jackie had been in a horrific mood, as evidenced by the fact that she stormed into the apartment at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning with two dozen eggs and a burning need to bake something. Isabelle didn’t ask, but she guessed it had something to do with the fact that Jack, once again, had to work on one of Jackie’s only weekends off for the entire month of July.

“At least he’ll get a break for the fourth at the end of the week,” Isabelle had said, trying to placate her, but it didn’t help anything. Jackie was so quiet and distant that Isabelle would have said anything to get her to cheer up, finally deciding to tell her about Alex.

“Well, can you try to be calm at least? Because I’m freaking out and I need you to be rational about this and tell me what to do.”

Jackie darted around the counter, leaning down to grab the whisk off the floor, wiping up brownie batter with a Lysol wipe as she went. She dumped the whisk into the sink, leaving the bowl abandoned, and hopped up onto the counter. “Tell me everything.”

So Isabelle did. She told her about what happened after Jackie and Jack had left the night of the party, about their smoke session in the living room, and about all of the times since then.

“Isabelle!” Jackie made a face. “I slept on that couch last night!”

“If that bothers you, I would not sit on that counter.”

Jackie mimed throwing up, hopping down and brushing off the back of her legs. “What is wrong with you? People eat here!”

Isabelle shrugged. “Believe me. If I could stop, I would.”

“So why don’t you?”

Isabelle sighed, sitting down on one of the bar stools and pulling the bowl of brownie batter towards her, grabbing a spoon. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

Alexander Ludwig  
9:42 a.m.  
talk dirty to me

Isabelle Fuhrman  
9:43 a.m.  
i’m not wearing any underwear

Isabelle Fuhrman  
9:43 a.m.  
because you never put the fucking laundry  
in the fucking dryer like i asked you to  
one hundred times

Alexander Ludwig  
9:45 a.m.  
can you do it?

Alexander Ludwig  
9:45 a.m.  
and then i’ll do something for you  
when i get home tonight…

Isabelle put her phone screen down on the counter, knowing that her cheeks were glowing bright red. Jackie raised an eyebrow at her, but did not ask her what the text had just said, thank God. “Well,” she said, clearing her throat. “A lot of reasons. For one… he’s my best friend. He’s been my best friend for years. And we’ve never done this before. So that’s weird.”

“Okay. What’s number two?”

“Number two, he’s my roommate. Which makes it even weirder. Because I know that he’s going to start dating all these girls and bringing them back here which is totally fine, but if we’re hooking up too…”

“It’s weird. I get it.”

“And,” Isabelle continued, spinning her phone around. “What happens if one of us starts to feel something more?”

“Do you?”

“No.” She shook her head quickly.

“Does he?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Have you talked to him about all of this? I mean, you’re right, he’s your best friend. You talk to him about everything else.”

They had briefly after they realized that what was happening was probably going to keep happening. “Do you want to stop?” Alex asked her one night. She could barely think; he had her pressed up against the headboard of her bed, his hands up her shirt and his lips warm on her neck.

“No,” she said, fisting her hands in his hair. “No, I don’t.”

“Good,” he said, murmuring the word against her skin. “I don’t either.” He pulled back, his eyes glazed over, just like they had been that first night except this time it had nothing to do with alcohol. The moon streamed in the window, falling across his face, and she pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Do you think we need some ground rules?”

She tugged on the neck of his shirt, waiting for him to pull it off. “Yes.”

He settled back down next to her. “Like what?”

“Like… if one of us gets uncomfortable, we stop.”

“Deal.” He leaned back towards her, and she planted her hand on his chest, pushing him away.

“And we be honest with each other.”

He nodded. “Okay.” She had to push him away again.

“And we promise that this won’t screw up our friendship. Cause that’s what matters most to me.”

“That’s what matters most to me too, Fuhrman,” he said. “I promise.” She nodded, and he raised his eyebrows at her. “Can I kiss you now?”

“Oh, yeah. Let’s go.”

Isabelle told Jackie about that conversation now, and Jackie just shrugged. “I’m not seeing the problem.”

“Yeah.” Isabelle took another bite of brownie batter before Jackie grabbed it away from her. “You’re probably right.”

* * *

Alexander Ludwig  
1:12 a.m.  
come home

Isabelle Fuhrman  
1:25 a.m.  
suck your own dick, i’m  
busy

Alexander Ludwig  
1:26 a.m.  
:(

Isabelle Fuhrman  
1:30 a.m.  
ten minutes

“Why do you look so suspicious?” Isabelle asked when she walked in the door, immediately frowning at him. He was waiting for her in the kitchen, a mixing bowl of mac and cheese in front of him. “You know, we have, like, regular bowls.”

“We didn’t have a bowl big enough,” Alex said. It was late on Wednesday, technically Thursday morning, the fourth of July, and Alex had just spent fourteen hours at the aquarium with Luca. They had been working with Clove all day with no improvement. He was starving and exhausted and frustrated. “And I do not look suspicious.”

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

Alex shrugged. He was too keyed up to sleep, both from being with the dolphins all day and from being around Luca. He needed to talk to his best friend about it. But first, he was going to mess with her a little bit. “I should be a lot of things,” he said, holding his fork out to Isabelle. “But I live to disappoint.”

She came over to him, putting her arm around his neck and grabbing the fork from him. “God, you make good mac and cheese,” she said.

Alex smirked at her. “How was Jackie?”

“Good. She’s gonna come with us to the fireworks tomorrow.”

“Good.” Alex grabbed the fork back, pulling the bowl back towards him. “I have the rent for you. Sorry I’m late on it.”

“No worries.” She was so close to him that he could see every freckle on her face even in the darkness of the kitchen. He snaked his arm around her waist, holding on tight to her. “I paid it a couple of days ago.”

“Okay, well I have it now.”

She held out her hand. “Give it.”

“Nope.” He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, pushing the bowl away. “You have to work for it.”

Isabelle frowned at him. “Work for it how?” Alex smirked at her. “Come on, it’s one in the morning!”

“Don’t worry, Fuhrman. I made you a map.” He pulled a piece of paper, ripped from his field notebook, out of his front pocket, sliding it over to her. She opened it.

“This is just a picture of your pants.”

Alex grinned at her, grabbing her wrist as she reached for the money. “Magic word.”

“Alex, this is ridiculous.” He raised his eyebrows, and she made a grab for the money, but he was too fast for her, snatching it out of his pocket and holding it out of her reach. “Give it!” She made one more grab for it, nearly toppling Alex off of the bar stool, and he kissed her, sliding the money onto the counter and forgetting all about how tired he was as she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

The lines were blurred. That was for sure. And he had started it. He wasn’t an idiot, even if he was acting like one. Isabelle had been his best friend since they were eighteen years old, and he had always noticed her in that way. That attraction didn’t go away the older they got. But he had never seen her as someone he could be in a relationship with, not because he didn’t care but because he cared too much.

Maybe they could have been a couple, but it would have been four years ago. There was too much history behind them now.

That history, apparently, was not stopping them from having sex every day. He had heard her when she told him that the first time would be the last. But then she had come home one night from work, and Alex was high and he just couldn’t help himself.

Things only got more complicated with Luca and AnnaSophia in the picture. He had meant to pull back a little for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was to figure out this thing with Isabelle, whatever this was. But it was like the more he pulled away, the closer they came. And he knew Isabelle didn’t care, knew that she would want him to be happy. That’s why they had the ground rules.

She asked him about Luca the next day as they were sitting in the kitchen, eating dinner and waiting for Jackie and Jack. “How is that going anyways?”

Alex looked at her carefully, stirring his spoon around in his bowl of Lucky Charms. “It’s going. I know it’s a bad idea, but it’s like… I can’t help myself.” He cleared his throat. He had always talked to Isabelle about the girls he was dating; this shouldn’t be any different now. So he wasn’t sure why it felt different, like he shouldn’t be doing it.

They had had a couple of close calls, him and Luca. It seemed like a game to her at this point, like she was seeing how far she could push him before he did something. They had been in the lagoon earlier, had just sent Clove back out to the deep water, closing the gate behind her when Luca pushed him into the pool. He came up sputtering water. “Oh, hell no.”

She laughed, the sun low in the sky, falling behind her and lighting up her hair like a halo. “It’s just too easy, Alex.”

He held out his hand to her. “Come on. Help me out.”

Luca danced out of his reach. “Absolutely not. I’m not falling for that.” But she held out her hand anyways, let him pull her into the pool next to him, like it was just what she had planned. She was so close to him, water dripping off her eyelashes, catching the light, and in a different world he would have kissed her right there in the water. He didn’t know what was stopping him, other than the fact that she was his coworker running through his brain, over and over and over every time he thought about taking things a step further.

“Just ask her out,” Isabelle said, spooning a marshmallow into her mouth. “You’re too far gone now.”

“Maybe,” Alex said, leaning back. He could hear Jackie and Jack’s door slam shut, heard the two of them in the hall. “Maybe.”

They were going to watch the fireworks and the parade on Ocean Drive, all four of them and some of the people from Isabelle’s office. They were going to get there early, stake out a claim at a table at one of the rooftop bars, get drunk and wait for the sky to light up above them. It was Jackie’s idea, and Alex was glad that at least one of them was smart enough to think that far ahead because the streets were already packed.

“Oh my God,” Jack groaned once they made it to Willie’s. “We’re never going to make it in. There’s way too many people here.”

“Don’t worry,” Isabelle said. She elbowed her way through the crowd, pushing through the door and going up to the hostess stand. The poor girl behind it looked overwhelmed, and Alex was convinced that they were about to get kicked out, but Isabelle turned around, gesturing to them. “Come on.”

They followed her up the stairs to the roof, pushing open the door. It was packed with people, waitresses carrying trays skirting through the crowd, twinkling lights strung over their heads. Isabelle pushed her way through the crowd, Jackie holding onto the back of her shirt and darting after her. The boys lost them immediately.

“Well, fuck,” Jack said, scanning the crowd, looking for them, but there were too many people around. “Dammit.”

Alex craned his neck, trying to see them. “Wait,” he said, pushing Jack in front of him, towards one of the big booths in the corner. “Over there.”

He saw the blonde woman first, the glow from the lights above them catching her hair. She was holding court in the middle of the bench, Mark on one side of her. Isabelle and Jackie were on the other side of the booth, their backs to the boys. Isabelle turned around once they got close. “Where the heck did you go?”

“We’re too big to sprint through the crowd, “Jack grumbled, flopping down next to Jackie. “I need a drink.”

“Alex, Jack, this is Leven,” Isabelle said, pointing across the table to the blonde girl. “She owns the clinic.”

Alex sat down next to her, sliding awkwardly into the space beside her. She smiled at him, holding out her hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said.

“Nothing good, I’m sure.”

She laughed. “Only good things. I promise.”

They were incredibly lucky that they had beautiful girls with them because otherwise they never would have gotten drinks. Leven, Isabelle, and Jackie went up to the bar, guys letting them budge in front in line and the bartenders paying attention to them right away. Alex would have been up for there for forty-five minutes at least, but they were back in no time, balancing a tray that Leven had swiped from one of the waitresses she knew. She handed Alex his Jack and Coke, her fingers brushing over his as she did.

They sat there for another half an hour, waiting for something to happen when finally the parade started below them, floats and bands and small children running through the streets. Mark, Jackie, and Isabelle jockeyed for position at the rail, shoving each other and laughing. “I’m gonna go get another drink,” Jack said, nudging Alex’s arm and standing up. Alex nodded. “Don’t leave without me,” he warned.

“I’m not in charge here,” Alex said. “But I’ll try to keep everyone corralled.”

“I’ll come with you,” Leven said, scooting toward Alex and waiting for him to stand up so she could get out. “Do you need anything?” She put her hand on his arm, looking at him, and he shook his head, the words not coming out. “Okay. Be right back.”

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:38 p.m.  
Whatcha doing?

Alexander Ludwig  
8:38 p.m.  
out with the squad. celebrating, like  
you should be

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:38 p.m.  
How do you know I’m not???

Alexander Ludwig  
8:40 p.m.  
i know you

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:41 p.m.  
Bet

Alexander Ludwig  
8:42 p.m.  
ok you’re on

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:42 p.m.  
Guess what I’m doing right now…  
If you’re right, you have to take me  
to dinner.

Alexander Ludwig  
8:43 p.m.  
what if i’m wrong?

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:44 p.m.  
I’ll take you to dinner.

Alexander Ludwig  
8:45 p.m.  
you’re 100 percent at the lagoon right  
now... you should be finishing cressida’s  
report but you’re sitting with the girls  
instead and eating one of those disgusting  
sandwiches

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:46 p.m.  
It’s not disgusting! It’s peanut butter  
and marshmallow.

Alexander Ludwig  
8:47 p.m.  
take that, facinelli

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:48 p.m.  
You win… Don’t get used to it!

Alexander Ludwig  
8:48 p.m.  
should’ve come with us instead… i’m  
not the girls but i’m pretty good company

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:50 p.m.  
Oh yeah? What are you wearing? ;)

Alexander Ludwig  
8:52 p.m.  
Attached: 1 Image

“Alex!” Jackie whipped around just as he dropped his shirt back down from where he had pulled it up to take a selfie to send to Luca. “Can you not send nudes while we’re at the parade?”

He rolled his eyes, dropping his phone onto the table. “Even with my shirt off, I’m wearing more clothes than you are, Emerson.”

She shrugged, turning back around.

Luca Bella Facinelli  
8:53  
Hot.

The rooftop got more and more crowded, people standing by their booth and shooting them pointed glares. “Alright,” Leven said once the fifth person had knocked into Alex’s elbow, sending his drink in a wave over the edge of his glass and practically into her lap. “I think it’s time for phase two.”

“What’s phase two?” Jack asked, looking around, slightly panicked. The man did not do well with change. “No one told me there were phases!”

“Calm down,” Jackie said, standing up and waiting for the rest of them to slide out of the booth. “No one is going to leave you again.”

“You say that now but every damn time we go out, I end up by myself in the middle of the bar because you’ve run off again.”

They followed Leven down the stairs and out of the bar, the crowd of people lining the streets even thicker than it had been before, if that was possible. Leven walked briskly away from everyone, heading towards the docks. “Where are we going?” Alex hissed to Isabelle, hooking one arm around her shoulder. She reached up, lacing her fingers with his.

“It’s a surprise.”

“You know how I am with surprises.”

“Yes. You’re worse than Jack.” She rolled her eyes at him. “But you’ll like this one, I promise.”

Alex made sure Leven was far enough in front of them that she wouldn’t hear him ask about her. “What’s her deal anyways?”

Isabelle looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I seem to have noticed that she is not wearing a wedding ring. So… single? Dating? In a very committed relationship and I shouldn’t waste my time?”

“How many girls do you need, Alex?”

Alex grinned down at her. “Is there a limit?”

Isabelle sighed. “She’s divorced.”

“So single.”

“Yes. And also my boss.”

“So what’s your point?”

They were at the docks now, Leven leading the pack ahead of them, Mark giving Jackie a piggyback ride and Jack trailing behind, eyes glued on his phone. If that man didn’t stop working twenty-four seven, Jackie was going to lose her damn mind. Alex made a mental note to talk to him about that later. Life was way too short to be spending that much time answering emails. And on a holiday no less.

“You go on with you, Alex,” Isabelle said, squeezing his hand. “But try to remember that I have to see her every day. And also that she’s an adult, unlike you. So try not to embarrass me.”

“Never,” Alex said, leaning down and kissing the top of her head. “I love you, Fuhrman.”

“Don’t get all sappy on me now.”

“Well, I figured I better say it now before Leven kills us all. Where the hell are we going?”

They were nearing the end of the docks, Leven skipping up the ramp of a big boat at the end. Mark followed her, Jackie and Jack turning around to shoot Isabelle a questioning look. “What is this?” Jack hissed.

Alex knew nothing about boats, but this one was big and white and shiny, and Leven was standing on it like she owned the place. “Because she does, Alex,” Isabelle sighed, dropping his hand and making her way up the narrow ramp, Alex’s hand on her back.

“Welcome aboard,” Leven said, holding her arms out like she was Vanna White and they were about to spin the wheel.

“No way,” Alex said, turning in a circle. “This is yours?”

“She sure is.” As far as yachts went, it wasn’t huge; Alex was pretty sure the appropriate term was actually cruiser, but it was the only yacht he had ever been on and he sure wasn’t complaining.

“What does she do?” Alex hissed to Isabelle as soon as Leven had gone towards the front of the boat to make sure Mark wasn’t trying to re-enact Titanic.

“I told you. She owns the clinic.”

“Fuhrman. She could own a hundred clinics and not have this type of money. This,” Alex gestured to the boat around them, “is fuck you money.”

Isabelle sighed. “Fine. She doesn’t like talking about it but her ex-husband was super rich. She got the boat in the divorce and a whole lot of alimony.”

“You’ve been holding out on me.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

They spent the rest of the night on the boat, sprawled out on the deck and in chairs and around the table, looking up at the fireworks breaking over their heads. There was food and alcohol and laughter and light, and Alex sat there with his arm around Isabelle, occasionally looking over at her as the fireworks lit up her face, and he thought that this was how love was supposed to feel.

* * *

Alex had been busy, and Isabelle didn’t just mean that he had two jobs and was constantly working, even though that was true.

But he had been even busier in his personal life, finally going out with Luca and seeing AnnaSophia almost every night and lusting over Leven from afar. Isabelle had sat on his bed as he got ready to go to dinner with Luca for the first time.

“So she asked you out,” Isabelle said as he discarded another shirt on top of the growing pile of rejects. Alex disappeared into his closet, emerging in yet another plaid shirt. Isabelle shook her head. “No. Enough with the plaid. It’s not the nineties, and we’ve moved on.”

“Fine.” Alex sighed, unbuttoning it. “And yes, technically she asked me out. But I would have done it myself. Eventually.”

“Sure, sure,” Isabelle said, making herself comfortable against his pillows and pulling out her phone. They could be here for a while. “So you’re going to dinner? And then what?”

“I don’t know.” Alex came back out of the closet, this time in a white t-shirt, the chain he always had around his neck peeking over the collar.

“Much better.”

He wrinkled his nose at her, turning to the mirror and messing with his hair. “Should I have planned something else besides dinner?”

“I don’t know.” She looked up from her Instagram feed to see Alex staring at her with a slightly panicked expression in his eyes. “Don’t ask me, Alex. I haven’t been on a date in longer than I can remember.”

“Yeah, about that.” Alex turned back to the mirror, trying to get his hair to swoop up in the front. “We’ve been here for a month, Fuhrman. What’s stopping you?”

“Nothing’s stopping me. I’m just tired and I work all the time.” She realized too late that Alex worked a whole lot more than he did and he still managed to juggle two girls at once, three if you threw Leven into the mix and four if you counted whatever it was that the two of them were still doing. He opened his mouth and she cut him off. “Don’t say it,” she said. “I know. I’ll think about it.”

The truth was that she didn’t really know what was stopping her. In the few weeks since they had moved here, she hadn’t really met anyone other than Jackie and Jack and their coworkers, none of whom were readily available to date her. They needed to go out, spend the night at the club. Maybe her luck would be better there. Jackie did keep talking about E11even after all. It was high time they all went out.

But for now, she would sit in the living room, watch Bob’s Burgers, and wait for Alex to get home from his date. This was her life, and she was perfectly happy with it.

Alex, finally content with the state of his hair, turned away from the mirror, coming over to her and kissing her on the forehead. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

She got up, following him out of his room and throwing herself down on the couch. “Have fun,” she called after him as he shut the door behind him.

With that, Isabelle found herself alone in the apartment for one of the first times since they had moved in. Even when Alex was gone, Jackie was usually with her, but she was working an overnight at the hospital. She could text Jack to come over, but there was always the chance that he was already asleep; that boy was like a ninety year old grandfather when it came to his sleep schedule. She turned the television on, kicking her feet up onto the back of the couch and going back to her Instagram feed.

She wasn’t bothered that Alex was dating; that wasn’t it, the reason for the weird feeling in her stomach. She wasn’t sure what the reason was actually, but it was there, sitting deep in her chest like something she could spit out and wrap her hand around. Heavy. Solid.

Isabelle ended up falling asleep on the couch, waking up around three in the morning to find Alex curled up against her, his shirt on the floor next to them and his skin warm against hers. She jerked up once she realized he was there, her heart beating fast, but he didn’t wake up, his breathing slow and even, and she lay back down, putting her face in his chest and breathing in his smell before falling back asleep.

“I think we should all go out,” Isabelle said the next morning. Jackie had stopped in on her way back from the hospital, bleary eyed, her hair falling out of her ponytail. She was standing at the toaster, staring at it like that would make it heat up her bagel faster, but she whipped around once Isabelle said the magic words, suddenly wide awake.

“Like out out? Like to the club out?”

Jackie had been begging them for a night out for weeks, but they hadn’t been able to get all of their schedules to line up. Between Jackie’s hours being all over the place and Jack and Alex working fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hour days, they were usually too tired once the weekend rolled around to do anything other than get high and lay on the couch for forty-eight hours. But, Isabelle figured, maybe if they planned it far enough in advance, they had a fighting chance of actually getting out the door.

“Out out. In a couple weeks, so don’t get too excited.”

“Oh, it’s too late for that,” Jackie said, grabbing her bagel and throwing it on a plate. “I’ve been waiting for this moment, Isabelle.” Alex came out of his room, his shorts hanging low on his hips, his hair ruffled from sleeping on the couch. “Good morning, Alexander,” Jackie said. “Good morning, Alexander’s beard.”

He stuck his tongue out at her. “What moment?”

“We’re going to the club.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, Alexander. We’re going to the club at nine thirty on a Saturday morning.”

“Pull the stick out, Jackie.”

They bickered like that for another few minutes, Isabelle finishing her cereal and leaning across the counter to put the bowl in the sink. God, she loved these people.

“I’m gonna go shower,” she said. “When do you want to leave?”

Alex looked at the clock over the stove. “Can you be ready in like a half hour?”

“You got it, boss.”

Alex was taking her to see the dolphins for the first time today. She felt like she knew them, felt like she had already been to the lagoon for as much as Alex talked about it and the girls. She was excited; she had never seen him at work before, had heard him talk about it and seen his notes and watched him as he hunched over his laptop at the coffee table, biting his lip and doing research, but she knew it was going to be an entirely different experience to see him in his element, doing what he really loved.

She thought about this as she got in the shower, closing the curtain behind her, the sound of her summer playlist filling the tiny bathroom. She closed her eyes against the glare of the sun streaming in the window, turning around to let the water hit her back. She didn’t hear the door opening over the music, jumped back as the curtain started to move.

“Alex, what the hell are you doing?”

He stood there grinning at her, dropping his shorts to the ground, and Isabelle knew her face was burning. Whatever it was they were doing was not something that happened in the daylight; it was one of their unspoken rules, and here he was breaking it. “Come on, Fuhrman,” he said, stepping over the ledge into the shower with her. “I have to shower too.”

He crowded into her space, pushing her up against the wall and kissing her, one arm balanced on the windowsill over her head.

An hour later, they were in the Jeep, speeding down the causeway, Isabelle’s hair drying quickly in the wind that was flying past them. She had her feet on the dash, looked over at Alex and smiled. This was exactly what she had pictured when she thought about them moving to Miami together.

Alex took an exit off the causeway, guiding the Jeep around the twists and turns of the driveway to the school, palm trees reaching over their heads. The further they got from the road, the more it felt like a jungle, like they were leaving everything else behind. The marine science building rose up in front of them quickly, Alex pulling into a parking spot.

“So this is it,” Isabelle said as he shut off the Jeep. “This is where you spend all your time.”

“Isn’t it great?” he asked her, turning to her with a huge grin on her face before hopping over the door of the Jeep, not even bothering to open it. She followed him into the building, looking around at everything on the walls. There were huge maps of the ocean, carefully drawn and detailed. In the center of the lobby was a big coral reef sculpture, reaching towards the high domed ceiling. Alex led her through a set of unassuming doors and down a narrow hallway, much different from the bright lobby they had just left.

“What do you want to see first?”

“It’s your tour, Alex. I’m just along for the ride.”

He showed her his office, a tiny room that couldn’t be much bigger than a broom closet, his desk pushed together with Luca’s, littered in paper and coffee cups and Starburst wrappers. “I try to spend as little time here as possible,” he told her as she spun around in his desk chair.

“You’ve never been much of an office guy.”

Alex was practically bouncing up and down he was so excited. “You ready to go see them?”

Isabelle stood up, giving the chair one last spin. “Lead the way.”

He practically shoved her into a wetsuit, pulling his own on with a whole lot more ease than she did. It was a struggle, to say the least. “Come on, Fuhrman. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” She waited for him to zip up the back of her suit before following him out of the locker room and into the bright sunshine of the lagoon.

The first thing she saw when she stopped blinking against the glare of the sun was green everywhere. Palm trees surrounded the area, pushing up against the sides of the building like they couldn’t get enough room. Sand sat in front of them, a few squat brick buildings sitting off to the side. The water stretched out past the sand, glittering in the sun, and a concrete deck jutted out into the water like an exclamation point.

“Wow,” Isabelle said, turning around and looking at everything, taking it all in. It was completely deserted; Isabelle didn’t know where Luca was, but for now it was just the two of them. “It’s gorgeous.”

“Isn’t it?” Alex took her hand, pulling her over to the dock. The concrete felt slick under her feet, and Alex kept his hand firmly on her back, keeping her upright. He knelt down, pulling a whistle out the neck of his wetsuit and pressing a button the control panel behind him. “Are you ready?”

She felt her hands shaking, tried to still them by putting them on her hips, but she knew she wasn’t disguising anything. “I’m ready.”

He blew the whistle, the sound completely silent, but Isabelle knew to watch the open water where the dolphins would be coming in. Sure enough, in a few seconds one of them came flying into the lagoon, barely visible with the glare off the water. She popped her head up in front of Alex, opening her mouth and exposing a row of teeth, making a chirping noise. Alex dropped a fish into her mouth.

“Oh my God,” Isabelle said. She had never been this close to a dolphin before, had seen them at SeaWorld and out in the ocean when her family went on vacation to the Bahamas or when she had gone to see Alex in California, but that was nothing like this. “Oh my God, that’s a real dolphin.”

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Alex said, reaching out and rubbing her nose. “This is Clove.”

“Clove,” Isabelle repeated. “Can I touch her?”

“She’s super friendly,” Alex said, nodding. “An idiot,” he said lovingly. “But super friendly.” Isabelle reached out her hand, tentatively hovering it over Clove’s nose. “It’s okay,” Alex said, swinging his legs into the water to stand on a hidden ledge, waist deep in the water. She touched Clove’s head, the dolphin’s skin smooth under her fingers.

“Wow, Alex,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. She looked up at him; the grin on his face was ear to ear.

“I never get over it,” he said, making some sort of hand motion under the water, Clove swimming over to him. Isabelle sat down on the deck, pulling her knees up to her chest and watching him. “I could do this for a hundred years and never get tired of it.”

“So what’s her deal? Why is she here?” Isabelle knew that Alex only worked with dolphins who were injured, rehabilitating them until they could be released, but it didn’t look like there was anything wrong with Clove.

“She was abandoned as a baby,” Alex said, motioning for Clove to roll onto her side. She did, raising one flipper in the air and waving at Isabelle. “I’m not sure why. It just happens sometimes. But because of that, she can’t live on her own. She almost died when she was out there by herself.” Alex looked behind them, out at the open ocean. “She doesn’t know how to get her own food or anything.”

“So what can you do?”

Alex sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. “I’m not sure. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

They stayed out in the water for another half an hour. Alex let Isabelle come out on the ledge with him, feed Clove a couple of fish, and even grab onto her dorsal fin, Clove taking her slowly around the lagoon.

Seeing Alex in his element like that, doing something that he loved and something that he was really good at, was incredibly cool, and there was no way to describe how it made her feel. Proud was one word that came to mind, but it wasn’t big enough.

She was next to him in her bed that night, just about to fall asleep when he rolled over, sliding his arm across her stomach. “I love you, Fuhrman,” he mumbled, half asleep.

Isabelle smiled at him, closing her eyes and sliding her hand into his. “I love you too.”

She didn’t know what to do without him, and deep down she dreaded the day that she would have to find out.

They had come very close to going down that path before, and Isabelle didn’t want to go back there. The longest she had ever gone without talking to Alex was twenty-eight days, and it was when he had been dating Nicole.

Alex had met Nicole in their organic chemistry class sophomore year of college. It was hands down the hardest class either of them had ever taken, and they were struggling, even though they had each other. They were pulling an overnighter in the library before their midterm, Alex practically tearing his hair out.

“I don’t get it,” he said, throwing his pencil across the study room. It hit the wall eraser end first, falling to the floor, and Isabelle leaned back in her chair to grab it. “I don’t fucking understand. I’m going to fail.”

“No, you’re not.” She handed it back to him, leaning over his notebook and pointing at something. “Look. If the valance is four…”

“Fuhrman. I. Don’t. Get. It.”

She sat back in her chair. “Okay. We need a break.” She pulled her laptop towards her, pulling up Tumblr. Alex messed around on his phone for all of ten seconds before standing up.

“I’m gonna go have a smoke,” he said, patting the pocket of his sweatshirt.

“Alex! You said you were quitting!”

“And I will. As soon as this midterm is over.”

The door to the study room swung shut behind them, and Isabelle put her head down on the table. Maybe Alex was right. Maybe they were going to fail. They had been at it for hours already; there were coffee cups and candy wrappers and crumpled up pieces of notebook paper littering the table and the floors. Alex got destructive with his notes when he was frustrated. The midterm was at one o’clock the next afternoon. She glanced at her watch: twelve hours to go. They had to get it together.

She looked out onto the main floor of the library through the glass wall of the study room, hoping that one of their upperclassman friends was out there and could explain what the heck they were doing. She didn’t see anyone, but she did see the girl who sat in front of them at their lectures. She had long swishy brown hair that she usually had up in a ponytail and that hit the front of Isabelle’s laptop every time she moved. Normally it drove her crazy, but these were desperate times.

Isabelle left all of their stuff spread out in the study room, closing the door behind her. The library was dead quiet, packed with people even though it was one in the morning, people hunched over their computers and drinking coffee and looking just as desperate as Isabelle was sure she currently did. Hopefully this girl would understand, and hopefully she was smarter than they were.

She tiptoed across the library floor towards the window where the girl was set up, and she slid into the seat across from her. “Hey,” Isabelle whispered, her voice carrying towards the high ceiling. “You’re in o-chem, right?”

The girl stopped typing and looked up, tilting her head to the side. “With Linz.”

“Yes. Oh, thank God.” Isabelle looked around, doing her best to make sure she wasn’t pissing anyone off. “Do you understand it?”

“I think so.”

“Can you come help us?”

Her name was Nicole Pedra, and she was infinitely better at organic chemistry than either of them would ever be, something that they found out quickly once Isabelle pushed her into the study room, told Alex to shut up and listen, and had her explain the last eight weeks of class to them in twelve hours. For some reason, when Nicole laid it all out, it made sense. The three of them walked to class together and took the midterm, and when Alex got his test back with a ninety-eight percent scrawled on top in bright red pen, he took Nicole to dinner.

And that was that. They started dating immediately, quicker than Isabelle even realized. Nicole immediately took over Isabelle’s place in Alex’s life, joining them at meals and waiting for Alex outside his chem lab and going to parties with them. At first, it was fine. It was nice having another girl around. But then things started to get weird.

Isabelle noticed it for the first time after they got back from Christmas break. They had split up, Alex going to California and Isabelle driving back home to her dad’s house in Madison. Nicole had joined Alex for the second half of break, and the weird part was that he hadn’t told Isabelle about it beforehand. He told her everything, and yet this she had to find out from his Snapchat story. She filed that away, meant to talk to him about it, but couldn’t pin him down long enough to even begin the conversation.

They got back to school in January, ready for the start of spring semester, and she didn’t even get a chance to see him for three days. She texted him the second she got back, asked him if she could come over to his dorm room so they could catch up, but she didn’t get an answer back. They had the same microbiology class together but the lecture was three hundred people and she didn’t even catch a glimpse of him.

This wasn’t what they did. This wasn’t what their friendship was like.

Finally, after a solid seventy-two hours, she just went over to his dorm, slipping in the side door that someone always kept illegally propped open with a cinder block, and she knocked on the door. “Hey, Josh,” she said when his roommate answered.

“Isabelle! I haven’t seen you in a while. How was your break?”

“It was good,” she said, trying not to make it obvious that she was looking around him, trying to see if Alex was there. “How was yours?”

“Good, good.” He stepped back, letting her into the room. Alex was sitting at his desk, his headphones stuffed in his ears. She could hear the music blaring through them as he scribbled out something in his notebook, practically tearing a hole through the page. She touched his shoulder gently; even so, he practically jumped out of his skin.

“Holy shit,” he said, spinning around, pulling his headphones out. “Fuhrman, you scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?”

She sat down on his bed, Josh letting himself out of the room quietly, which was probably best because she was not going to go down without a fight. “What the fuck are you talking about? I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“Yeah, sorry.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I’ve been super busy.”

“How can you be super busy? We’ve been back at school for three days. There’s barely even any reading yet.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked uncomfortable. In the year and a half that they had been friends, Alex had never hesitated to tell her things. Sometimes he went too far in the opposite direction, usually when he had been drinking, and blurted out intimate details about his sex life or asked her to help him go to the bathroom. He was never one to hold anything back.

“Alex. What’s going on?”

He pushed himself away from the desk, shutting his computer and turning to face her head on. “Here’s the thing. Nicole thinks that I see you too much.”

That’s what Isabelle had been worried about. The thought had been there, in the back of her mind, only growing stronger as she saw every Snapchat and Instagram story of the two of them together in California over the break. It grew stronger every time she called or FaceTimed Alex and he sent her to voicemail. It grew stronger with every ignored text and conversation he finished quickly, always rushing to get somewhere that didn’t involve her anymore. But she hadn’t wanted to say it.

And now it was out there.

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” Isabelle said. It sucked, sure, but she knew Alex would have her back. He always did.

Alex cleared his throat, and that was the first time Isabelle really realized how this was going to go down. “Yeah. I mean… she is my girlfriend though.”

“So?”

“Come on, Fuhrman.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable, but there was no way in hell Isabelle was going to let him off the hook like that. She was going to make him say it. He sighed again, seeing her face and knowing exactly what she was doing. “I don’t want her to be upset. I just need to be careful.”

Isabelle stood up. “Got it.”

“Fuhrman, I…”

“Don’t worry about it, Alex.” She was already halfway out the door, didn’t turn around to see if he was following her or not.

What followed was the worst twenty-eight days of her college career so far, and quite possibly the worst twenty-eight days of her life. She caught a glimpse of Alex in their microbiology class, but it was always across the auditorium and he was always with Nicole, not even looking in her direction. They had the same lab section, which was a little more awkward since there were only twenty people in it, but again he kept his distance, saying hello and good-bye and not much else.

She cried in the shower and she cried when she got drunk and she cried when she went to bed at night. She tried not to look at his Snapchat or Instagram or Twitter, burying herself in homework and spending as much time in the library as she could so that she wasn’t just sitting alone in her dorm room.

It was the middle of February when he came back. Isabelle had been having a particularly shitty day. She had barely made a dent in her reading for next week, she had just spent six hours in the library to study for a test that she would never be prepared for (fuck you, macroeconomics), and she had just gotten back to her dorm room to find that she had left her ID card sitting on the desk in her room, but not before she dumped out the entire contents of her backpack on the front step of the building to make sure it wasn’t in there. And if that wasn’t enough, it was snowing, and not nice, pretty, normal snow but awful, shitty, Minnesota blizzard snow, practically coming down sideways and whiting out the entire campus.

“Fuck,” she muttered to herself, hiking her backpack up onto her shoulder and going around to the side of the building where her dorm room was. Thank God she was on the first floor. She was in the middle of pushing up the window, ready to make a flying leap when she heard Alex’s voice.

“Fuhrman.” She turned around to see him standing there behind her. She could barely make him out through the amount of snow falling. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, a beanie pulled low over his eyes, his hands shoved in his pockets.

“Alex, what the hell are you doing? We’re in the middle of a blizzard.”

“Why are you breaking into your own dorm room?”

“Oh. I left my ID inside.”

There was a pause, Isabelle waiting for him to say something. He took a couple of steps closer, pushing through the snow, the wind whipping his words away. “I fucked up,” he said, and she heard every syllable even through the snowstorm. “I fucked up.” He came closer, and she could see the look on his face, like he had been crying, not that he would ever admit it.

She could have said a lot of things, could have agreed with him, could have told him that the last month had been the worst of her life, that she didn’t know how to live without him. She could have blamed him. She could have yelled or cried or iced him out. But instead she dropped her backpack into the snow, waiting for him to come put his arms around her, and when he did she hugged him back because that’s what they did. They didn’t hold grudges. They were just there, no matter what.

The rest of July went by quickly, in a whirlwind of work and beach days and Alex. They had finally found a Saturday night when none of them had to work and everyone was able to commit to going to E11even. Jackie was out of her mind with excitement. She had been planning her outfit for days, ended up falling asleep in Isabelle’s bed the night before, clothes and makeup strewn everywhere.

Isabelle woke up because Jackie’s elbow was jamming into her spine. “Jackie,” she said, squinting against the sun. Holy shit, she had a headache. They should not have had so much wine the night before. “Jackie, move!”

Jackie grunted, rolling over and pulling a pillow over her head. Isabelle climbed over her, pulling one of Alex’s t-shirts that had been discarded on her floor over her head and going into the kitchen. She needed Lucky Charms and coffee immediately, or her head was going to explode. It was not a good sign that she was waking up cranky.

She was rubbing her eyes when she walked into the kitchen, sat down at the counter and put her head down. “Morning, Fuhrman,” Alex said, and she jerked her head up. He had his back to her, grabbing the coffee creamer out of the fridge, every muscle in his back clearly visible as he moved. AnnaSophia was sitting on the counter next to the fridge, also wearing one of Alex’s t-shirts, smiling sheepishly at Isabelle and eating cereal.

“Jesus,” Isabelle said, her heart racing. That would teach her not to do a quick scan of the room before walking in. “Hey.”

He let the fridge swing shut, turning around and pouring creamer in his coffee, raising his eyebrows at Isabelle over his mug as he took a sip. “Sleep good?”

“Passed out,” she said, shrugging, smiling weakly at AnnaSophia. “How about you guys?”

She regretted asking the question immediately, Alex and AnnaSophia glancing at each other and then looking away, their faces red, and all of a sudden Isabelle wasn’t hungry anymore. She grabbed a cup of coffee, skittering back to her room and closing the door. She could hear the two of them murmuring to each other, was trying not to listen but at the same time wanted to hear everything. She sat down on the bed, resting her back against the wall and drank her coffee, closing her eyes.

AnnaSophia was not Nicole. Neither was Luca. She had to keep reminding herself of that. Everything was going to be just fine.

* * *

E11even was packed. It was always packed, at least that’s what Jackie said, not that Isabelle had any experience in the matter. It was a giant club, the middle sunken down, neon lights flashing everywhere and bottle girls walking through the club with bottles of alcohol, fireworks stuck in the necks of the bottles, spitting sparks. They had barely made it through the door without getting separated, Jackie keeping a tight hold on Jack’s wrist because the boy was liable to wander off and never be seen again.

There was a whole mess of them: the core four had invited Mark and Leven, and Alex pushed his way through the crowd, Isabelle holding onto the back of his shirt. Leven had gotten them a VIP table, a couple of bottles already there, and Alex stopped next to it. “Looks good, Lev,” he said, and even in the darkness of the club Isabelle could see him smile at her, put her hand on her back as she dropped her jacket in the booth.

Jackie was practically jumping up and down with excitement. “Alright, Jaq,” Isabelle said. “What do you want to do first?”

“Drinks. And then dance.”

Leven waved down one of the bottle girls, who brought them a tray of shot glasses. She poured them a row of Ciroc, handing them out, and they all took one and then two. Isabelle felt it go to her head immediately. Ever since walking into the kitchen this morning, she hadn’t really eaten, and the vodka was going straight to her head.

The music was pounding, lights swirling around them, and people packed into the club. It was hot and loud and crazy, and Isabelle knew that she needed to drink a little bit more to make this seem all a little less insane. Or a lot more.

They all crowded into the booth, Isabelle sandwiched between Jackie and Mark. Alex kept catching her eye across the table, winking at her as he ran his thumb along the rim of his glass. He had one arm stretched across the back of the booth, so he didn’t technically have his arm around Leven’s shoulders but it sure seemed like he did.

“Come on,” Isabelle said after a while, nudging Jackie out of the booth. “Let’s go dance.”

“Be careful,” Alex said. “Text me if you need me.” Alex had always acted as her own personal bouncer when they went out to the club, pushing his way in between Isabelle and whatever guy was bothering her, staring them down and waiting for them to leave. You didn’t want to fuck with angry Alex, that was for sure.

The dance floor was even more packed than the rest of the club, Jackie pushing her way right into the middle of it. “Okay,” she said, leaning close to Isabelle and still having to yell into her ear to be heard. Someone bumped Isabelle from behind, and she felt something hit the floor, splashing up onto her leg. Yuck. “We need to find you someone,” Jackie said. “Unless you want to keep doing the Alexander thing forever.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes at Jackie. Over the last couple of weeks, Jackie had largely left her alone about it, bringing it up as a joke every now and then, but she knew the girl well and knew that she had thoughts that she was dying to share. It was just that Isabelle wasn’t ready to hear them. She would be eventually, but she was pretty happy with how things had been going. Why fix what wasn’t broken?

“You can try to find me someone,” Isabelle yelled back. “But I’m picky.”

“Fucking tell me about it,” Jackie said, looking around. This was a game she played with Alex whenever the three of them went out somewhere, the two of them trying to desperately to find Isabelle’s next big thing. Ever since she had started sleeping with Alex, he had stopped being so interested in the game, listening as Jackie talked and sometimes giving his opinion, but never pointing anyone out.

Alexander Ludwig  
10:42 p.m.  
you okay?

Alexander Ludwig  
10:45 p.m.  
have you been snatched?

Alexander Ludwig  
10:50 p.m.  
if you don’t answer me, i’m gonna come  
the fuck down there and find you

Isabelle Fuhrman  
10:50 p.m.  
settle, alex. we’re good. you really think  
jackie would let anything happen to me?

Alexander Ludwig  
10:51 p.m.  
good point

Isabelle shoved her phone back into her pocket, biting back a grin. God, she loved that man.

She and Jackie stayed on the dance floor for a while, staying until someone simultaneously stepped on Jackie’s foot and spilled their entire drink on her arm. “Okay,” she yelled, turning to Isabelle. “Let’s take a break before I kill someone.”

Jackie elbowed her way out, dragging Isabelle with her. It was late, she was exhausted, she was kind of buzzed, and honestly all she wanted to do was go home and get into bed with Alex. She didn’t know at this point if that was something that she should want, if she should be wanting him that way so blatantly, but she did.

They made their way up the stairs, darting past people, Jackie pushing people out of her way to get back to the table. All Isabelle could think about was leaving, planning on asking Alex if he would walk her back to the apartment, but she wasn’t going to get a chance to do that.

Jackie stopped in her tracks, Isabelle bumping into her back. “Ow, Jackie, what are you doing?” She looked over Jackie’s shoulder and saw exactly what had stopped her. Alex was leaning on the edge of the table, Leven in between his legs, and even with all of the people in between them and the darkness of the club, Isabelle could see his lips moving over hers, one of his hands fisted in her hair and the other slotted in the back pocket of her jeans.

So yeah. Isabelle would absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent not be going home with Alex tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/mandaestella/playlist/15dXTMax1YkfJCIE9fY3b1?si=d4EWuX5FTW-d7CAQ-axBug


	3. fell in deep with a girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> / i don't think you can save me  
> / from this spell that i'm under  
> / lately shit has been crazy  
> / cause i can't do it no more  
> / fell in deep with a girl and it's taken its toll  
> by myself by christian french

After the Nicole incident, Alex couldn’t stop apologizing. For days, even weeks afterwards, Isabelle would catch him looking at her, stopping her in the middle of a sentence, a sad look on his face. Finally she told him to cut it out; everything was fine, they were fine, and there was nothing else to say about it.

Even so, he kept saying how sorry he was.

“Why did you break up?” she asked him that night he came to find her in the snowstorm. They were sitting in her dorm room, her back up against the wall and her legs across Alex’s lap. He rested his hand on her ankle, taking a deep breath.

“Because of you,” he said simply.

He had hoisted her through her window, and she had knocked almost everything off her desk on the way down, running down the hallway to let him in. By the time she opened the front door to the dorm, he was shivering, his cheeks and his nose and the tips of his ears bright red. Once he had sat down on her bed, shoving his cold hands under her giant knit blanket, he told her that he and Nicole were over. For good.

“Because of me.”

“Isabelle,” he said, looking at her intently, like she was the only person in the world. “You matter more to me than any other girl. You always will.”

That sentiment was put to the test during their senior year, and it was being put to the test again now.

Ever since Alex had hooked up with Leven at the club, Isabelle barely saw him. He was still working crazy hours during the week at the university, and he was gone all day on Saturdays at the surf shop. When he did have free time, he was spending it somewhere with Leven. The boy was head over heels, and Isabelle didn’t know how to feel about it.

“You know what we need?” Leven asked one morning. She was sitting at the front desk, her chin in her hand, lab coat slung over the back of her chair. They weren’t open yet, but people would be arriving any minute to drop off their pets before they went to work. It was a full day, a couple of surgeries scheduled for the morning and a solid afternoon of check-ups.

Isabelle was writing the names of the pets who would be in on the whiteboard, Mark spinning around in a chair, reading off the names and throwing treats at her every so often. “What’s that, Lev?”

“A yacht day.” Leven leaned back, kicking her legs up on the desk.

“Tater,” Mark yelled from behind Isabelle, and she turned to look at him.

“Tater.”

“That’s what it says,” Mark said, pointing to the computer screen. “Tater. T-A-T-E-R. Write it down.”

She rolled her eyes at him, turning back to the board and adding the name to the bottom of the list. “Okay. So. Yacht day.”

“Yes!” Leven started tying her hair up. “We’ll just get a bunch of food and alcohol and, you know, somebody to actually drive the damn thing and we’ll go out in the bay and just hang out.”

“I’m down,” Mark said. “That’s all of them, Iz.”

She capped the marker, throwing it over her shoulder at Mark who barely managed to catch it, shoving it in a drawer. “Me too,” she said. “Count me in.”

It was weird, her best friend dating her boss, even if Leven didn’t act like her boss most of the time. The more time Isabelle spent with her, the more she could see why Alex was so infatuated; the woman was gorgeous and funny and whip smart. And she had been the one to tell Alex to go for it. But she hadn’t realized at the time that going for it would really mean going for it, that he would never come home and they would end up communicating mostly through text.

Sure enough, when Isabelle got home that night after the late shift, the apartment was dark. She checked Alex’s room, wondering if maybe he was just sleeping, but nope. Nothing. She thought about calling Jackie, but decided that maybe she could just wallow in her own pity, even if it was only for a little while.

They hadn’t slept together since before that night at the club, and that had been two weeks ago. Normally, they only went a couple of days without it, and that was only when they were super busy and too exhausted from work. She hadn’t seen Luca or AnnaSophia either, even though she knew Alex was sleeping with both of them too. That’s how she knew that whatever this thing with Leven was, it was real.

Alex had just broken up with someone before they moved, not wanting to be tied down when they went to Miami. And now, here he was, about to jump into something head first, just like he always did. Isabelle could only hope that this time there wouldn’t be any pieces for her to pick up.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
11:32 p.m.  
lev wants to take everyone out  
on the yacht tomorrow

Jackie Emerson  
11:32 p.m.  
Oh, you know I’m so there.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
11:35 p.m.  
ok great. what about jack?

Jackie Emerson  
11:36 p.m.  
Nope. Working.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
11:40  
ah shit okay. i’m sorry, jac

Jackie Emerson  
11:42 p.m.  
Where are you? Apartment??

Isabelle Fuhrman  
11:42 p.m.  
yes

Jackie Emerson  
11:43 p.m.  
Be there in five.

“Well, well, well,” Jackie said the next morning when Alex walked in the front door, looking a little sheepish. “Look who it is.”

He rolled his eyes at her, dropping his backpack on the ground. “Don’t start, Emerson.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

He went into his room, yelling over his shoulder as he did so. “I’ve been busy!”

“You’ve been something,” Jackie muttered under her breath. Isabelle stayed quiet, stirring her spoon around in her Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Alex came back out of his room a few minutes later, his hair wet and his face flushed, like he had just taken the fastest shower known to man. “Are you leaving already?” Isabelle asked, pushing her bowl away from her. Suddenly, she wasn’t so hungry anymore. “I didn’t think you had to go to the surf shop today. I thought maybe we could hang out.”

“Ah, shit. Sorry, Fuhrman.” Alex dropped down onto the stool next to hers, and he leaned forward, resting his forehead against the side of her head. He sat there like that for a few seconds, and Isabelle didn’t even dare to breathe for fear that the moment might be broken. But quickly, too quickly, he sat back, pulling her bowl towards him and taking a couple of bites. “I promised Lev I would go shopping with her to get stuff for today.” He stood up, grabbing his wallet out of the bowl on the counter that they chucked everything into when they walked through the door, and he shoved it in his back pocket. “But I’ll see you later, right?”

“Yeah,” Isabelle said, but she didn’t know if he was even listening already halfway out the door. “See you later.”

The door slammed shut behind him, and Isabelle tried desperately to avoid eye contact with Jackie, but it was no use. “What the hell is going on with you two?”

Isabelle sighed, standing up and bringing her now empty bowl over to the sink, rinsing it out and putting it in the dishwasher. She was taking up as much time as possible, hoping Jackie would suddenly lose interest. But this was Jackie they were talking about; they both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“I don’t know,” Isabelle said, looking around for more dishes to clean up. She didn’t want to sit down while they had this conversation, didn’t want Jackie to be able to look in her eyes and figure out what she was feeling, especially since she herself didn’t really know. “I guess nothing.”

“Did you have a fight or something?”

Isabelle took Jackie’s coffee cup, refilling it and sliding it back across the counter to her. “No, nothing like that. I just… haven’t seen him. It’s like we’re on different wavelengths now or something.”

“Are you still banging?”

Isabelle rolled her eyes at her best friend, wrinkling her nose. “We haven’t in a while, but it’s not like we had a conversation about not doing it anymore.”

Jackie made a humming noise in the back of her throat, and Isabelle wanted to ask her what her opinion was, but couldn’t, the words not coming out.

They were supposed to be meeting Leven (and Alex, apparently) down at the docks at two-thirty, which left Jackie and Isabelle just enough time to go to brunch and get buzzed on mimosas. By the time they made it down to where the yacht was tied up and ready to go, they were both a little unsteady on their feet, Jackie holding on carefully to Isabelle’s arm, their bags slung over their shoulders and sunglasses on.

Alex was already on the boat, sprawled across one of the seats at the table at the front of the yacht by the hot tub, shirt off, sunglasses on, one arm hooked above his head. “Fuhrman!” he said, sitting up and waving her over like she couldn’t see him sitting there. “Come here!”

She made her way carefully over to him, Jackie still holding onto her arm tight above the elbow. When she got closer, he pushed his sunglasses up, narrowing his eyes at her. “You are toasted right now.”

“I am not,” she said indignantly, immediately proving his point. “We just had a couple mimosas at brunch.”

“A couple of mimosas for the two of you is like… six. At least.”

“So what?” Jackie said. “It’s yacht day. Let us live, Ludwig.”

“Hey,” he said, raising his hands. “Who am I to tell you not to day drink on a Saturday?”

“Exactly.” Isabelle sat down beside him, forgetting for a few moments where they were and what they were and who else was around, and she hooked her chin over his shoulder, closing her eyes and feeling the sun warm on her head and her shoulders.

In that moment, Isabelle felt like she had nothing to worry about, like everything was back to how it normally was between them. Alex slipped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side, his bare skin warm against hers, and she swung her legs across his lap, just like she always did. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, looking down at her and smiling. She reached up, lacing her fingers through his. See, she told herself. Nothing has changed.

* * *

Alex didn’t know what being in love felt like. He thought that he had, a few times actually. There had been his high school girlfriend, Lindsay. He had definitely thought he was in love with her, not thinking about the fact that were seventeen years old and didn’t know their butts from a hole in the ground. She had broken up with him almost immediately after graduation, and as far as he knew, she was married with a kid now.

Then there had been Nicole, which had been, for all intents and purposes, a disaster. He had thought he was in love then too, and he had been blinded by that for an embarrassing amount of time. He should have known the second she told him he couldn’t see Isabelle anymore that that wasn’t going to work out. He’d be damned if anyone was going to try to keep him away from his best friend. Even so, that one had hurt when he broke it off. The relationship had been fast and furious, and it ended the same way.

And then there had been Kristy, just a few months ago. They didn’t talk about that one. It was still too fresh, for both him and Isabelle.

The bottom line was that he had never been in love. When he moved to Miami, he would have said that he was looking for it, that if it came he would be receptive, but he wasn’t actively trying to make something happen. And then he had met Leven.

By the time he kissed her in the club, he had been dating both Luca and AnnaSophia for a few weeks, and his feelings for them were real too. Alex went back and forth from long-term monogamist to serial dater, depending on his mood. When he had moved to Miami, he had fully intended to return to the dating game, just have fun and not get too serious, like he always did.

He had entirely failed on that front.

The second he kissed Leven for the first time, he knew that she was going to be his next girlfriend, that much was clear to him. And the more time he spent around her, the more he was sure that she was the perfect one for him.

The only thing that wasn’t perfect was the fact that she was Isabelle’s boss. But Isabelle was his best friend, and he knew without a doubt that she would tell him to go for it, that she wanted him to be happy just as much as he wanted that for her. Even so, he made sure to ask her first, bringing it up as casually as he could so that she wouldn’t know how serious he was.

He kept seeing Luca and AnnaSophia, getting coffee and going to lunch and texting them at midnight when he couldn’t sleep. It was fun, and they were great. But he kept his dinner plans open, reserved for Leven. At some point, he would have to have some conversations.

He would get there.

This was what Alex always did, and he knew it very well. He met a girl, fell head over heels, got too caught up, and ended up alone. Well, not alone. He always had Isabelle. That girl had picked him up after more breakups than he could caught, always there next to him, telling him that he would be fine, he was too good for this shit, and the next one would come along in about an hour. She never left him.

Now, sitting on the yacht with his arm around her, he felt bad. He had been MIA from the apartment for two weeks, ever since the night at the club when he went home with Leven. But he just couldn’t help himself. And he knew Isabelle would understand. She always understood, and she loved him in spite of it all. He kissed the top of her head, knew she was well on her way to being shitfaced and that he needed to watch out for her. That’s what he did. That’s what he would always do.

He glanced up, saw Leven looking over and smiling at him. Every time he caught her doing that, he felt like he had just jumped off a cliff in the best way possible, his breath catching in his chest.

Alex had known the second Jackie and Isabelle started planning their night out that that was when he was going to make his move, knew that if he didn’t do it right away he would chicken out and lose his chance. He hadn’t meant for it to turn into this, hadn’t meant to get so serious so quickly. But he just couldn’t help himself.

Jackie and Isabelle had gone down to the dance floor; even when they were back in college, he could barely ever get Isabelle off of it. She would spend the entire night out there, Alex bringing her a new drink every now and then. As soon as they disappeared down the stairs, Alex turned to Leven. “Can I get you a drink?”

She didn’t need him to get her a drink. She didn’t need anything from him. But she tilted her head to the left, her long blonde hair falling like a curtain over her shoulder, and when she smiled at him it was like light. So he got her a vodka soda and leaned close to say a whole lot of nothing in her ear, and it only took him about an hour to seal the deal.

“Come on,” Leven had said. “Let’s go dance.” She stood up, grabbing his hand and yanking him out of the booth. He didn’t even have to think twice about it, tugging on her hand and pulling her back towards him. She came easily, stepping between his legs as he leaned back against the table. She kissed him or he kissed her; he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that her lips were on his, her hand on his jaw, and as she moved against him, he felt like he was home.

It wasn’t like kissing Luca or AnnaSophia, because as good as that felt it was nothing like this. A thought flitted through his mind, that this was what kissing Isabelle felt like, but he pushed it away, feeling his heart beating under Leven’s hands, and he pulled her closer to him, not caring that they were in the middle of a club because it felt like they were the only two people on earth. He could do this for the rest of his life.

He went home with her that night and every night since.

Alex hadn’t realized how much he had missed Isabelle until here she was here next to him, her hand caught in his, laughing loudly at something Jackie said. He had, in the past, treated her like shit when he was in a relationship. He never meant to, of course he didn’t, but it happened, and he vowed not to do that this time, no matter what it took.

Not that he and Leven were in a relationship. But that’s where this was heading, and it was happening faster than Alex could even begin to process.

Mark finally showed up, racing up the ramp and practically faceplanting his way onto the yacht. Jackie rolled her eyes, getting up to help him, but she was a little wobbly herself. Leven was out of sight, over by the crew, making sure they knew where everything was. Before long, they were pulling away from the dock, the sun beating down on them. It was a perfect day.

Isabelle squeezed his hand before untangling herself and getting up to go say hello to Mark, who immediately busied himself getting the girls drinks. Alex had purposely left his phone at the apartment this morning, wanting just one day to relax, but now he was wishing that he had brought it. He was itching to text Luca and see how the girls were doing.

Thankfully, he had Leven to distract him.

She came over to him, sitting down next to him on the bench and folding her legs up underneath her, handing him a beer. He took it, the bottle cold against his lips as he took a sip. “Thanks, Lev,” he said, resting his hand on her knee.

“Thank you for being here,” she said, hooking her chin over his shoulder the same way Isabelle always did, threading her arm through his.

Everything about Leven’s life was big: her house, her boat, her personality. In addition to being the owner of the clinic, which was one of the busiest in Miami, she was known around the country as one of the leading veterinary surgeons, and she traveled all the time to conferences and universities to teach. He could barely keep up with her, and he consistently felt inferior. But she loved to hear about his job, had some great ideas and could listen to him talk about it all day. What more could he ask for?

When Isabelle came back over to the table, flanked by Mark and Jackie, she didn’t sit back down next to Alex, instead settling down on the opposite side of the table. He tried to catch her eye, but she had her sunglasses on. More of Leven’s friends showed up on the boat, climbing aboard laden with bags and towels and bottles. There was Jen and Josh, who Alex had met at brunch the other day, Leven’s friends from college. There was Amandla and Willow, a couple of the receptionists at the vet clinic, both working there while they went to college. Even Dayo had managed to get away from the shop for the day, bounding up the ramp and presenting Leven with a bottle of Veuve.

Once they were all on board, the yacht pulled away from the dock, puttering slowly through the marina before picking up speed. It was different from how it had been on the fourth of July; then Alex and Isabelle had been inseparable. Now Isabelle roamed around the yacht, leaving Alex with Leven and her friends. This was new territory for the two of them; for the last four years, Alex and Isabelle didn’t leave each other’s sides, even when they were dating people. But they were adults now, and maybe this was their new normal.

It was a smooth ride out to the bay, the captain stopping the yacht and dropping the anchor down. Isabelle and Jackie were in the water immediately, pulling their t-shirts over their heads and jumping off the front of the boat. Alex joined them, but not before pushing in Leven, Mark and Dayo close behind.

They swam around for a while, eventually pulling themselves back onto the deck of the yacht to warm up in the sun. Isabelle was sprawled out on her stomach, her head pillowed on her arms, and Alex flopped down next to her, shaking his head and sending water flying everywhere.

“Alex!” She jerked her head up.

“Hey Fuhrman,” he said, grinning at her. “How’s it going?”

She was drunk. Not buzzed, not tipsy, but flat out drunk in a way that he hadn’t really seen her in a long time. He reached behind him, opening the mini fridge in the corner and grabbing a bottle of water, twisting off the cap and handing it to her.

“Drink this,” he said. “Otherwise you are not gonna feel good tomorrow.”

She sat up, crossing her legs in front of her and taking a big drink. “I think the ship has sailed on that one.” He watched her, her hair falling down her back in waves as it dried, freckles splashed across her nose, and he realized that no matter who he was with or where he was at in his life, he would always be attracted to her. “Fuhrman.”

“Yes?” She turned towards him, setting the water bottle down on the deck.

“I miss you.”

“Then come home,” she said simply.

He inched closer to her, resting his head in her lap, and he felt her thread her fingers through his hair. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

* * *

Isabelle should not have had all of those mimosas at brunch. It had started off innocently enough, but the restaurant’s Saturday brunch boasted bottomless mimosas and Jackie was determined to find that bottom. They did not succeed, but by the time they got to the yacht, Isabelle’s head was swimming. She tried to slow down, had a couple of beers, but every time she saw Alex and Leven together, she got a little bit thirstier.

They had pulled away from the dock, were making their way out to the bay, when Isabelle got up to go to the bathroom. She was at the back of the yacht, sitting between Jackie and Mark and looking at the water flying by beneath them. “I’ll be right back,” she told them, making her way to her feet and holding onto the railing as she passed by the side of the cabin, trying to get to the door.

She pushed it open, her head swimming, and it was dark inside, her eyes taking a moment to adjust after the bright light of the summer sun. She had only been in here once before on the fourth of July, and she was trying to remember where she was going when she realized what she was walking into.

The door to the bedroom was cracked open, and Isabelle could hear Alex before she saw him, knew exactly what was going on because she had heard him make those sounds before. She stopped, frozen, but not before she saw Alex’s back through the open door. His shirt was off, every muscle in his back obvious as he moved. She couldn’t see around him, thank God, but he had Leven up against the wall, the muscles in his arms flexing as he held her up, and Isabelle could catch a flash of blonde hair and a bare shoulder before realizing that she had to get the fuck out of there.

She backed out of the room, shutting the door as quietly as possible, her need to pee completely forgotten. “Are you okay?” Jackie asked as she sat back down between her and Mark. “You look… weird.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Isabelle felt like she was moving in slow motion, and even though it was pushing one hundred degrees, her face felt cold. “I’m good.”

Isabelle had never been immune to Alex’s looks; God only knew she saw how other girls looked at him when they went out, got a lot of dirty looks for being the one by his side. But he was Alex, and she only ever saw him as Alex, until recently at least.

Over the past couple of months, she had gotten used to ending up his bed, didn’t think twice when he leaned over to kiss her when they were watching television or got in the shower with her or put his hand up her shirt when she was standing at the stove making breakfast. Now that she was barely around him anymore, she missed those little things, and now that she was finally seeing him again, she realized how much she had gotten used to just being able to touch him whenever she wanted. She couldn’t be near him, especially when she was drunk, for fear that she would do something entirely inappropriate.

All of these thoughts ran through her brain as Mark and Jackie talked around her. She was flustered and tired and starting to come down from her buzz, and above all she missed Alex, missed falling asleep next to him, his arm slung around her and his breathing heavy as he slept.

That was probably why she said yes when Mark asked her out.

“Wait, what?” Alex asked her that night. It was just the two of them back at the apartment; they had dropped Jackie off at her place, getting her settled in her room before heading across the hall, Alex pushing the door open for Isabelle, both of them collapsing on the couch. “You’re going out with Mark?”

Isabelle pulled her legs up, trying to stay as far away from Alex as possible so she wouldn’t be tempted to jump on him. “Sure seems like it.” She was finding it hard to look at him without the fact that she had walked in on him having sex flashing through her brain.

“What happened to your no dating people you work with rule?”

Isabelle sighed. “In case you hadn’t noticed, unlike you I don’t really have people lining up at our door to date me.”

Alex shook his head. “That’s because you don’t let them, Fuhrman. Believe me. They’re there.”

Unlike Alex, Isabelle was neither a serial dater or a serial monogamist. She had barely dated in high school, and she had only had a couple of relationships in college, neither of them lasting more than a couple of months. There were a few girls that she saw off and on, but nothing was ever serious, definitely not in the way Alex’s relationships were.

“Sure, sure,” she said, grabbing the remote off the coffee table. She wanted him to stop looking at her like that. Even though they hadn’t had a conversation about it, she knew that things had changed, that since Leven came around everything was different. They couldn’t do what they had been doing anymore, and when he looked at her like that it was all she wanted to do.

“Well, where is he taking you?”

God, he would not let this go. “I don’t know. I’m not in charge.” She flipped through the channels, looking for something, anything, that would make him change the subject. She stopped on a rerun of Breaking Bad, but even that didn’t slow him down.

“He didn’t tell you anything?”

“No. Just that he would pick me up tomorrow night.”

“What time?”

“Jesus Christ, Alex. Do I grill you about whatever it is you’re doing with Leven?” She knew she was snapping at him, knew that she should just tell him what was going on in her brain, but that was not going to happen.

“Sorry, sorry.” He raised his hands. “You can if you want though. I’m an open book.”

Absolutely not. She had already seen enough. “Good to know.”

Jackie Emerson  
10:34 a.m.  
Want me to help you get ready tonight?

Isabelle Fuhrman  
10:35 a.m.  
no

Jackie Emerson  
10:35 a.m.  
Come on!

Isabelle Fuhrman  
10:38 a.m.  
absolutely not. you’ll go way overboard.

Jackie Emerson  
10:39 a.m.  
Excuse you. I have never gone  
“overboard” in my life.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
10:40 a.m.  
hahahahahaha

It really was not a big deal, and Isabelle did not know why everyone was making it into one. So what if she hadn’t gone out with anyone in the entire two and a half months they had been here? And so what if it was Mark?

He was a good guy. Even Jackie thought so, and that was really saying something because Jackie generally didn’t like anyone at first. But she liked Mark; she had only told Isabelle that about a thousand times in the last twelve hours.

Jackie had been sitting right there when Mark asked her out, although Isabelle wasn’t sure how much if it she had heard. It was late in the day, the sun starting to go down, and they were all tired and hot and sunburned, their buzzes starting to wear off and leave them with, in Isabelle’s case at least, what was bound to be a massive hangover. “So I was thinking,” Mark said, shooting a look at Jackie who was sprawled out on her back on the deck, her baseball cap over her eyes.

“Uh oh.”

“Ha ha.” He made a face at Isabelle. “But for real. I think you should let me take you to dinner.”

“Like a date?”

“Yes.”

She wasn’t expecting him to be so up front about it; in her experience people generally waffled around their feelings, boys and girls alike. It threw her off a little bit. “Uh… yeah. Yes. We can do that.”

Her quickness to answer surprised herself, and she shot a look at Jackie, who had not moved a muscle. “Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

And now here she was at seven forty-five, standing in front of her closet because she had absolutely nothing to wear. Alex was sitting on her bed, the roles reversed for once, watching her and messing around on his phone just like she always did when he was getting ready to go out. “Not that one,” he said, looking up from his game. “Wear white. You look hot in white.”

Isabelle felt like her heart jumped at the words, quickly turning away from him so he wouldn’t see the flush on her face. She pulled her shirt over her head, dropping it on the floor and grabbing a white tank top off a shelf, pulling it on and turning around. “Better?”

Alex looked up again, and she couldn’t tell for sure but it looked like his cheeks were a little red too. “Perfect.”

To Isabelle’s surprise, Alex had stayed in last night and all day today. She half expected him to stay on the yacht with Leven or peel off from the others to go home with her, but instead he followed Isabelle off the boat, one arm around her waist to steady her. She woke up late this morning, sleeping through all of the alarms she had pointlessly set, knowing even as she did so that she wasn’t getting up early, and Alex was sitting in the living room, eating crushed up cookies in milk and calling it cereal.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, thanking God that she had put on pants. “I figured you would be gone.”

He shrugged, dropping a piece of cookie into his lap. “I haven’t been home in a while. I thought we could hang out.”

They went grocery shopping, due to the fact that Alex was eating crushed up cookies in milk and calling it cereal, and then came back to the house, sacking out on the couches and watching five hours of Fantasy Factory until it was time for Isabelle to start getting ready. It felt exactly like how it used to.

Isabelle was just finishing her makeup when there was a knock on the door, Alex jumping up. “I’ll get it,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“Jesus,” she muttered under her breath, capping her mascara and throwing it back into the bathroom drawer. She could hear Alex let Mark in, their voices low. She strained to hear what they were saying, but they were talking infuriatingly quietly. She looked in the mirror one more time, adjusting a piece of hair falling across her forehead before grabbing her phone and shoving it into her back pocket, closing the door of her room behind her.

“Hey,” Mark said, smiling at her. It was weird to see him here in her kitchen even though he had been here before. It was the context, she knew; the last time he had been here it was for a party with a lot of people, not to take her to dinner, just the two of them. “You look great.”

She had spent most of her time over the last two and a half months with Mark. Although there were half a dozen vet technicians at Leven’s clinic, she and Mark were on the same schedule, both of them choosing to work late shifts sometimes in order to have the weekends off. She had liked him right away; he was outgoing and funny and incredibly loud, reminding her a lot of Alex. He was also great with the animals, cats especially, which made Isabelle’s job a whole lot easier.

“Thank you,” she said, trying her best not to meet Alex’s gaze. He was sitting on one of the bar stools, staring at her; she could feel it, and she didn’t know what it was about. “You ready?”

Alex grabbed her arm before she could follow Mark out the door. “Have fun, Fuhrman,” he said, his voice low. “Text me if you need me.” She didn’t know what the look was that she spotted in his eye, but it stuck with her as she nodded, shutting the front door behind her and getting in the elevator with Mark.

She tried to shake it out of her head, climbing into Mark’s truck that was idling on the curb. “So where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” Mark said, looking over his shoulder as he pulled onto the street.

The surprise turned out to be the beach, Mark driving the truck right out onto the sand. Isabelle rolled down the window, kicking her feet up on the dash and sticking her arm out the window. It was a perfect night, the sun low enough in the sky that they weren’t burning up, the sound of the waves crashing floating through the window of the truck.

Mark kept driving, the truck leaving tracks in the sand behind them, until they made it to an empty part of the beach, the dunes rising up behind them, the city totally out of sight. He turned the truck around, backing it up so that the bed was facing the ocean.

Isabelle paused before she hopped out of the truck, yanking off her Converses and leaving them behind. The sand was warm under her feet, the sun just starting to go down. “Wow,” she said. Mark was pulling down the tailgate of the truck. “It’s really something isn’t it?” They had been here for a couple of months but they had never come to the beach at night. During the day it was always packed, but now it was quiet, save for the sound of the waves and the seagulls overhead.

Mark had brought a ton of food, packed into the coolers in the back of the truck, and they sat there, eating fried chicken off paper plates, their legs dangling off the back of the truck.

The good news was that there was no way they would ever run out of things to talk about. Work alone could keep them occupied for hours. But Isabelle couldn’t get the way that Alex looked at her before she left the apartment out of her mind. It stayed in the forefront of her brain, sitting there heavy even as Mark leaned over and kissed her, and all she could think was that this was the perfect night and the perfect guy, but for some reason it still didn’t feel quite right.

* * *

During their junior year of college, Alex brought Isabelle home with him.

They hadn’t seen each other all summer; Isabelle had gone back home to her dad’s house in Wisconsin and Alex had spent two months in Canada studying killer whales. He FaceTimed her every night for hours, staying on the phone with her until one of them fell asleep. She was the first person that he texted every morning when he woke up, and he texted her every single one of the thousand pictures he took that summer.

When they got back to school, Alex refused to leave Isabelle’s side. It was the first year they had classes apart from each other, and even just being away from her for more than a couple of hours sucked. So when it came time to make their plans for winter break, it was a no-brainer that she was going to come back to San Diego with him.

“Wait, really?” she asked him when he told her. “You really want me to come with you?”

“Of course.” Alex shot her a look. “Don’t be dumb.”

They decided to drive, even though it would take them two full days of driving. “You don’t really get the experience if you don’t do it as a road trip, you know?” Alex said. They both knew that the real reason was that he had just bought the Jeep and couldn’t bear to be away from it for a month. He called it a she, but she blatantly refused to do so.

So they made the thirty hour trip, taking off the second Alex finished his last final, Isabelle already packed and ready to go, impatiently waiting for him outside the biology building, the Jeep gassed up and ready to go. They made their way through Iowa and Nebraska, stopping in Colorado to take pictures at the top of a mountain before continuing on through Utah and Nevada, flying through Las Vegas in the middle of the night, Isabelle refusing to stop even as Alex begged her to.

They made it to San Diego around seven in the morning, the sun breaking over the ocean. Alex’s family lived on the water, the beach right out the back door. Isabelle had met his parents a couple of times, and she knew Nick, of course, who had chosen to fly back home instead of driving with them, but she hadn’t met his younger sisters yet. Natalie was Nick’s twin, but instead of coming to Minnesota with him, she had chosen to go as far in the opposite direction as possible, settling at Louisiana State University. Sophia was a senior in high school, all set to join Natalie in the fall.

They came sprinting out of the house once Alex pulled up outside, the crash of the waves against the rock making it incredibly clear to him that he was back home. He had fallen asleep to that sound every night for eighteen years.

Alex barely managed to catch Sophia as she launched herself at him, spinning her around. Natalie went straight for Isabelle, and Alex was glad he had taken the time somewhere around Utah to remind her that she absolutely was not allowed to sleep with his sister.

It was one of the best months of Alex’s life. He loved having Isabelle around, got to show her where he went to high school and where he had worked and where he’d gotten his first kiss and what part of the beach he went to every morning. He taught her how to surf. He sat next to her under the tree on Christmas morning. He watched her with his family. He fell even more in love with her every day, so thankful that this tiny firecracker of a girl was his best friend.

On New Year’s Eve, they slipped away from the massive party that Alex’s parents were having for all of their friends, Alex shoving a bottle of champagne under his shirt and sprinting after Isabelle out the basement door and around the side of the house to the Jeep. “Where are we going?” Isabelle asked.

“You’ll see,” he said. Back in high school, they went night surfing every New Year’s Eve, paddling out into the ocean and sitting there as the sparks flew overhead. But tonight he just wanted to be alone with his girl.

He drove to the end of the street where the houses ended and the sand began, jumping out to open a gate. “Alex, what are you doing?” she hissed, looking around. “That sign clearly says No Trespassing.”

“Live a little, Fuhrman,” he said, climbing back into the Jeep and bumping over the curb, the sand falling away underneath them. It was slow going in the soft sand, but once they got into the hard packed stuff by the water, he went faster, gunning the Jeep down the beach and glancing at the clock. It was almost midnight, and he didn’t want to miss anything.

He glanced over at Isabelle; she had her feet up on the dash, just like she always did, head tilted back, hair whipping in the wind, and a giant smile on her face. “It’s great, right?” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the wind and the waves.

“It’s perfect!” she yelled back.

Too soon, he slowed to a crawl, and then a stop, parking so that they could sit in the back of the Jeep and look out at the water. He hoisted her up onto the tailgate, pulling out the blankets and pillows that he shoved back there earlier today and spreading them out, laying down next to her. “Okay,” she said. “Now what?”

“Shush,” he answered. “Be patient.”

They had made it just in a time; only a couple of minutes later, the fireworks started. “Holy shit,” Isabelle said, and Alex looked over at her. Her face was lit up by the lights, flashing pink and blue and green as the sparks broke over their heads, falling down towards the water. “Holy shit.” Alex slipped his arm under her head, pulling her into his side, and she let one leg fall over his. They lay there like that for a long time, well after the fireworks ended because Alex just didn’t want the night to end.

He thought about that night now, waiting for Isabelle to come back from her date. He knew now how she felt every night he was out late. He cleaned his entire room and both bathrooms, did all of the laundry, loaded the dishwasher, read a couple of journal articles, and then sat and stared out the window for a solid twenty minutes before realizing that he should probably get up and do something.

Alexander Ludwig  
11:30 p.m.  
want to come over? i’m home alone…

Leven Rambin  
11:35 p.m.  
I’m out with the girls. Sorry, sweetie! So  
wish I could.

Alexander Ludwig  
11:40 p.m.  
no worries. see you tomorrow?

Leven Rambin  
11:41 p.m.  
Absolutely. Can’t wait.

Well, shit. He grabbed a beer from the fridge, going out to the balcony to have a cigarette. He had stopped smoking a long time ago, but he knew Isabelle kept an emergency pack in her underwear drawer for whenever he got really stressed, and he was at a point in his life where he could have just one and not end up chain-smoking for a week.

Alex took a long drag off of the cigarette, knocking the top of his beer off against the railing and looking out at the ocean. He didn’t know why all of a sudden he was so twitchy, why he felt like he couldn’t sit still and couldn’t concentrate on anything. He just wanted to hang out with his best friend.

He ended up smoking two more cigarettes and then a joint, although it was much less fun to do it on his own than it was when Isabelle was here. When she got high, she always wanted an Icee and she would watch television and tell him over and over that everyone on the television was high too, even when they were watching New Girl. She got especially touchy when she was stoned; that had only become even more apparent in the last couple of months, and a memory flashed into Alex’s brain of the last time they got high together a few weeks ago, Isabelle pushing him back onto the couch and going down on him, the air smoky and sweet around them.

He grabbed his phone, checking to see if she had texted him. It was past midnight, and he knew he should just go to bed; he had to work in the morning, but he couldn’t turn his brain off. He sat on the couch in silence and darkness until he heard her key turn in the lock, and he quickly got up, sprinting to his room and throwing himself into bed, pretending to be asleep when she poked her head in.

“Alex,” she whispered. He wanted to get up, wanted to see if she was alone, wanted to ask her how it went, but something in his gut was telling him not to. “Alex,” she whispered again, a little louder. He kept his eyes closed, assumed she was gone, but a few seconds later, he felt the blankets move, Isabelle crawling in next to him. He waited until he knew she was asleep, her breathing soft and even, and then he rolled over, putting his arm across her stomach and burying his face in her neck. Even though he had been wide awake all night, he fell asleep almost instantly.

* * *

Jackie was turning twenty-five.

Isabelle was enlisting Jack’s help; he was going to take her out to dinner to give her enough time to get everyone into the apartment for a surprise party. Twenty-five was a big deal, and she was going to make it a big deal. Everyone was coming: Dayo, Mark, Leven, AnnaSophia, Luca, Jen, Josh, Willow, Amandla, and all of Jackie’s friends from the hospital. The apartment was going to be packed, and Isabelle had been planning for days.

Alex was currently trying to lug a keg into the elevator, Isabelle hopping up and down impatiently. “Come on, Alex!” she hissed at him, looking around the lobby of their building like Jackie was about to pop out at any second. “Can you go any faster?”

“Fuhrman.” He grunted as he lifted it into the elevator, his face red. “Can you chill the fuck out?”

“I don’t want her to see us!”

“Well, I don’t want to die of an aneurysm at the ripe age of twenty-three.” He looked up at her, holding her gaze with an even, measured stare. “Is that what you want?”

“Obviously not, you drama queen,” she said, hitting the button for the seventh floor repeatedly, like that would make the door close any faster. “Calm down.”

Alex looked up at her, still crouched on the floor next to the keg. “I am not the one who needs to calm down!”

“You’re yelling right now.”

“I am not!”

Isabelle Fuhrman  
10:14 a.m.  
about to come upstairs with the keg. can  
you make sure jackie isn’t creeping by the door??

Jack Quaid  
10:14 a.m.  
You got it!

Once the elevator got to the seventh floor, Isabelle poked her head out into the hallway, making sure Jackie wasn’t lurking somewhere. As soon as she saw that the hallway was clear, she turned back to Alex. “Okay, come on!”

“Fuhrman, I swear to God, if you don’t help me…”

Isabelle grabbed one side of the keg, helping Alex drag it out of the elevator and holding the door open for him as he picked up the keg, muscling it through the door and into their apartment before deposition it unceremoniously on the kitchen floor with a thud. “Alex!”

“She can’t hear us. Calm down.”

He was in a snappish mood today, and Isabelle didn’t know why. She had gone out with Mark again last night, and Alex had already been asleep when she’d gotten home. She had wanted to wake him up, wanted to talk to him, but she didn’t. He had been staying at home more lately since the day on the yacht, since she had told him to come back, but ironically she had been gone more. She had picked up a few shifts in the last couple of weeks, wanting extra money for Jackie’s birthday, and when she wasn’t at work, she was probably with Mark. She had brought him around the apartment a couple of times, but mostly they stayed away.

It was crazy how quickly things changed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Isabelle asked him.

He pulled the bottom of his shirt up, wiping sweat off his forehead. August in Miami was a killer. “Nothing.”

“Alex.”

“Isabelle.”

She sat down on the kitchen floor, reaching into the freezer and pulling out a handful of ice, throwing a piece at Alex before putting the ice on the back of her neck. He sat down across from her, stretching his legs and holding out his hand for another piece. “Seriously though,” she said. “What, did you and Lev break up or something?”

She handed him another piece of ice. “No,” Alex said, shoving it in his mouth and chewing on it which he knew she hated. “She’s just got this conference coming up so she’s been getting ready for that.”

Isabelle pulled one knee up towards her. Her chest felt tight, and she didn’t know why. “I’m glad you’ve been around more,” she said.

He tipped his head to the left, looking at her. “It’s kind of ironic, yeah? You’re gone all the time now that you have a boyfriend.”

“I do not have a boyfriend,” she said quickly. “Let’s not get carried away.”

“Well, that’s sure what it seems like.”

It had only been a couple of weeks since she and Mark had gone on their fast date, and she had seen him a few times since then. They certainly hadn’t had that conversation yet, and Isabelle was hoping it didn’t come up anytime soon. She liked him, but she was just having fun. Alex should understand that better than anyone.

“Is Leven your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

Alex finished chewing his ice, not meeting Isabelle’s eye. “I’ve been thinking about bringing that up with her though.” Isabelle felt cold all of a sudden, even though it was almost one hundred degrees outside and their air conditioner could barely keep up.“You know… making it exclusive.”

“What about Luca and AnnaSophia?”

Alex hesitated. “I talked to them already.”

Well, that was news to Isabelle. The first selfish thought that went through her head was that all four of the women Alex was currently sleeping with were going to be at this party tonight. Her second thought, equally selfish, was that she didn’t want anything to change. She wanted Alex all to herself; even though he had been dating three girls at once over the last few months, he was still her Alex. He still came home to her at night. If he had a girlfriend, that would change.

“When?”

“Over the last couple of days.” His phone started ringing; he glanced at it but didn’t answer, and Isabelle had to try real hard not to look at the screen to see who was calling. “I just told them that it’s been fun and I really care about them but that my personal situation has changed.”

“And they were cool with that?”

Alex snorted. “They are so far from the girls I dated in college. They’re cool.”

Isabelle wondered briefly why he hadn’t had that conversation with her, if at some point they were going to talk about the fact that they had stopped sleeping together. Did they even need to? She didn’t know how she felt about it, and as much as she thought about it, she couldn’t figure it out.

“So you’re not gonna ruin my party?”

He laughed. “No. I promise.”

Jack Quaid  
8:35 p.m.  
We’re on our way up. Are you  
ready?

Isabelle Fuhrman  
8:35 p.m.  
all set!

Jackie was surprised, to say the least.

Isabelle had never pulled off a surprise party in her life; she had never even tried. She meant to do it for Alex every year but he always figured it out before she could even start planning. But Jack had managed to keep Jackie out of the apartment long enough for Isabelle to get everyone inside.

And by everyone, she really did mean everyone. There were about fifty people packed into the apartment, even more than there had been at their housewarming party. The keg was in the kitchen, liquor bottles and cups lining the counter, a cooler full of ice sitting in the corner. Mark had once again commandeered beer pong out on the balcony, Luca by his side.

When Jack brought Jackie up, flinging the door open, everyone jumping up and shouting, she damn near cried, and Isabelle got the whole thing on video. It only took about an hour for everyone to get really toasted, the alcohol flowing and people smoking out on the balcony.

Isabelle had been worried when Luca and AnnaSophia showed up, even though Alex had assured her that it would be fine, but by the time they got there, he was already drunk and making out with Leven on the couch and she didn’t know how well that would go over. But he was right; the girls were golden. They came in, one right after the other, putting bottles of Jack on the counter and greeting Isabelle with big smiles on their faces. No harm, no foul.

“Iz!” Jackie came up behind her, throwing her arms around her. She’d had two Long Islands, courtesy of Alex’s bartending skills that he had refined in college, and she was leaning so heavily on Isabelle that she thought she might actually fall down. “You did all this for me?”

“Of course.” Isabelle tightened her grip around Jackie’s waist as she wobbled, threatening to pull both of them to the ground. “You’re my best friend.”

“Alex is your best friend,” Jackie said solemnly. “But I’m honored to be a close second.”

Isabelle was about to protest, opened her mouth to say something, but Luca and AnnaSophia rushed up to them, pushing them over into a dog pile on the floor. This was exactly what she had needed, Isabelle thought, laughing as Luca pulled them all up to go take shots in the kitchen.

She barely saw Alex all night. He mostly stayed in the living room with Leven and Jen, drinking beer and not meeting Isabelle’s eye every time she crossed through the room to the balcony. She still didn’t know what his deal was; she had kept badgering him about it all day as they set up for the party, but he resoundingly refused to tell her anything. She looked at him through the window when she was out on the balcony, waiting for Jack and Dayo to finish setting up a new game of beer pong, breaking out of her spell when Mark slipped his arm around her waist.

It was about two o’clock when Jackie finally crashed, and the party dwindled down after that. Mark lingered by the door, Isabelle finally kissing him, her lips landing on the corner of his mouth before she pushed him out the door. She assumed Alex would be leaving with Leven, but after the apartment cleared out, she saw him standing out on the balcony, having a cigarette.

“Alex!”

He whipped around, quickly dropping it on the ground and crushing it under his foot. “Yes?”

“What is that?”

He held up his hands. “To what are you referring?”

She picked her way through the load of pizza boxes and empty cups and sticky shot glasses littering the living room, pushing her way out onto the balcony. “Since when did you start smoking again?”

He shrugged. As Isabelle stood there looking at him, the moon shining down on him and his eyes bright in the darkness, she wanted to reach out and touch him, wanted to kiss him and tell him everything was going to be alright, but that wasn’t her role anymore. She couldn’t. So she turned around to go inside, halfway through the door when he said her name.

Alex always called her Fuhrman. He had called her by her last name since the day he met her, and she could count on one hand the amount of times in their four years of friendship that he had called her Isabelle. But here he was, doing it.

She turned, and he was right there. Every nerve in her body wanted to touch him, but she didn’t, just looked up at him and waited for whatever was coming. A million things flashed through her mind as he slid his hand under the back of her neck and leaned down to kiss her, and at first she didn’t kiss him back, but it was like the dam broke, weeks of awkwardness between them giving way to this.

“Alex,” she whispered, like there was anyone around to hear them. “What-”

“Don’t,” he said, pushing her backwards into the wall behind her, cool against her back in the darkness. So she kept quiet, slipping her hands underneath his shirt and focusing on what was in front of her instead of the mess going on in her head.

“Isabelle,” he said again when they were in his bed, and he moved over top of her, blocking out the moonlight streaming in through the window. “I’m so in love with you,” he said, the words sending a shock down her spine, but he didn’t give her any time to say anything back before he kissed her again, pulling her back under.

Jackie Emerson  
12:02 p.m.  
I feel like DEATH but that was the  
best party ever!

Jackie Emerson  
12:02 p.m.  
Thank you sosososo much.

Alex was gone when Isabelle woke up the next day. She checked her phone to see that she had a couple of texts from Jackie, but nothing from Alex. She assumed he was at the surf shop, thought maybe she would stop by later on her run. They had both been drunk last night, but she remembered every single second of what happened, his words burned into her brain. He told her that he loved her all the time; they both did, but saying he was in love with her seemed like a different thing, something deeper.

She needed to talk to Jackie.

“Here’s the thing,” she told her ten minutes later. They were sitting out on the balcony, the beer pong table shoved to the side, cups stacked underneath it until they could get up the energy to actually clean up. “He said it while we were having sex.”

“Like right after?”

“No, like during.”

Jackie wrinkled her nose. She looked a little worse for wear, but not too bad, all things considering. “That’s too much information.”

“You asked!”

“True.” Jackie paused, considering. “But it’s not like this was some random one night stand. It’s Alex. I would trust that if he’s saying something, it’s because he means it.”

So Isabelle put on her running shoes, leaving Jackie alone in the air conditioning to go on a run. She made it to the surf shop quickly, the sun bright overhead and sweat already trickling down her back. AnnaSophia was there, her hair bright in the sunlight. “Hey!” she said as Isabelle got close, slowing to a stop in front of the little hut. She had a board laid out in front of her, flipped upside down, and she leaned over it as she talked. “Great party last night!”

Isabelle rubbed the back of the neck, realizing that she had forgotten to put on sunscreen. “It was something,” she said, trying to smile, but she was too anxious to put that much effort into it. “Is Alex here?”

“He was,” AnnaSophia said, throwing the bar of wax she was holding into a bucket at her feet. “He went out about an hour ago.” She pointed down the beach. “I think he’s down there if you want to go find him.”

Isabelle called a thank you over her shoulder as she took off down the beach. Normally running made her feel better, cleared her mind a little, but she was probably a little too hungover for this to be such a great idea. She dropped down to a walk as she got down the beach, spotted Alex immediately. He was sitting in the sand by the pier, his board propped up beside him, looking out at the ocean.

She hesitated, wondering if maybe he wanted to be left alone, but she knew that she had to talk to him or she would go crazy trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Hey,” he said, when she dropped down into the sand next to him, like he had expected her to come. “How do you feel?”

“Hungover.”

He laughed. “Same. I think we’re getting a little old for that.”

“Speak for yourself,” she said, even as her stomach turned over.

“Hey, you’re older than I am.”

“By three months!”

There was a long pause, Isabelle looking over at him, pulling her legs up to her chest and resting her arms on her knees. She wanted to say something, anything, but she didn’t know what. Alex reached over, putting his arm around her shoulders, and she scooted closer to him, the sand warm underneath her and the skin where he was touching her burning underneath him.

They could’ve sat like that for hours, she knew, but Alex started talking. “Listen, Fuhrman,” he said, and she knew immediately that whatever he had said last night was a product of alcohol and lust, not because he actually felt those things. She could tell before he even started talking. “You’re my best friend, and I’ve had fun… doing what we’ve been doing.”

She cleared her throat, felt like there was a lump forming there, getting bigger with every word. “But?”

He looked down at her, the sun so bright behind him she could barely look at him. “Leven. And Mark.”

“Yeah,” she said simply. “Yeah.”

“I just think we shouldn’t do it anymore.”

“Okay.”

He studied her intently; she knew he was staring at her without even looking at him. They had always been like that; she knew what he was thinking before he did sometimes. But not now. Now she had no idea what was going on in his head. Between the hangover and the rollercoaster of emotions that she had been going through, she didn’t open her mouth, for fear that she might throw up or cry or worse. So she just sat there with him, feeling like he was a million miles away, even as he was right there in the sand next to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/mandaestella/playlist/15dXTMax1YkfJCIE9fY3b1?si=d4EWuX5FTW-d7CAQ-axBug


	4. wish i could lose myself in you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> / wanna dream crazy dreams, be a team like we used to  
> / share a drink, sleeping bag, anything like we used to  
> / wish i could lose myself in you like i used to, like i used to do  
> / your heart is out of reach, but you're so close to me  
> / your skin don't feel as deep as it used to, like i don't know you  
> used to by sandro cavazza

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big big big shout-out to emily, who talked me through my writer's block and gave me the piece i needed to make this chapter come together. thank you for loving these people as much as i do.

Alex’s mom always told him that traveling together was the true test of a relationship. If you could make it through that, you could make it through anything. He had used that to gauge the status of his relationships ever since. He should have known that it wasn’t going to work with Nicole because of how annoyed she got when he brought her back to San Diego during his sophomore year of college. Clearly, he didn’t learn his lesson because he went through the same thing with Kristy two years later.

Isabelle, on the other hand, was the perfect person to travel with. She liked to drive, would let him play anything he wanted on the radio, and was always game to stop at the top of a mountain or in the middle of the desert because he wanted a picture.

His mom’s rule was the first thing he thought of when Leven asked him to go to Atlanta with her.

“I’ll be at the conference all day,” she told him when she asked him, sprawled out across her giant California king bed. “But they’re putting me up in a really nice hotel and I thought maybe we could make a long weekend out of it.”

They had been dating for over a month; the end of August came and went, and Alex kept seeing her, although he hadn’t yet gotten up the courage to ask her to be his girlfriend. She was ten years older than him, he reasoned. She didn’t need him to ask her that for this to be an official relationship. They were more mature than that. Or at least she was.

Alex’s second thought was of his bank account, which was looking a little bare. Having a girlfriend was expensive, and he hated that Leven tried to pay for everything all the time. But he would figure it out; he would pick up a hundred extra shifts in order to be with this girl.

“Are you sure you want me to come?”

She rolled on top of him, brushing his hair off his forehead. “Absolutely.”

So two days later, they were on their way to the airport in a Town Car at four o’clock on a Thursday morning, their suitcases loaded in the trunk. Alex had been staying at Leven’s almost every night since Jackie’s birthday party, barely seeing Isabelle, so he stopped by the apartment the day before to pick up some nicer clothes and see what she was up to.

She wasn’t there.

He puttered around the apartment, digging through the laundry for clean jeans and thinking God that Isabelle had been doing his laundry while he had been MIA. Once he had his bags packed, he sat down at the kitchen counter, pulling his phone out and FaceTiming her.

The connection was fuzzy at first, and Alex could hear movement on the other end before he could see anything. Finally, Isabelle came into view, her face filling the screen. “What’s up?”

He propped his phone up against Isabelle’s laptop. “Where are you?”

There was some shuffling in the background, Isabelle turning her head to say something to someone. “I’m at Mark’s.” The sun was shining so brightly behind her that he could barely see anything, but now that he looked closer, he could see that she was laying on her stomach in someone’s bed. Mark’s bed, apparently. “Are you home?”

“Yes,” he said. “I wanted to see you before I leave tomorrow.”

“Leave?” she asked. “Leave where?” There was more movement on her end, Isabelle turning her head again, and he could distantly hear her hiss at Mark, “Cut it out, I’m on the phone!” She turned back to Alex. “Where are you going?”

“Atlanta,” he told her. “With Leven. For a couple of days.”

“Oh.” She considered this. “When will you be back?”

“Sunday night.”

“Okay.” He didn’t know what he wanted her to say, but he wanted more than this, whatever this conversation was. This wasn’t how they communicated, this weird stilted way of speaking. “Well… have a safe trip. Text me when you get there?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Alex waited until she hung up the phone. He thought maybe she would come back, leave Mark’s so that she could see him before he left, but apparently that was not going to be the case. She had a boyfriend now. Everything was different.

Isabelle was insistent that she and Mark weren’t officially together, that they were just hanging out, but ever since Jackie’s birthday party, she had been spending more and more time with him. Alex spent most of his time at Leven’s apartment, not bringing her overnight to theirs because hers was much nicer, but when he did come back, he found Mark’s stuff around: a toothbrush in Isabelle’s bathroom, his boxers kicked under her bed, his phone charger plugged in at the counter. He knew Mark was around more than Isabelle said he was.

Now Leven dozed on his shoulder, and he pulled his phone out.

Alexander Ludwig  
4:02 a.m.  
don’t forget me while i’m gone.

His finger hovered over the send button, but he ended up deleting the message. Isabelle could text him if she wanted. She clearly had a lot of things going on, and maybe she just didn’t have as much time for him anymore. He could understand that. Or he would try to at least.

Alexander Ludwig  
4:05 a.m.  
show the girls a picture of me so that they  
still remember me when i come back!

Luca Bella Facinelli  
4:07 a.m.  
Don’t worry, Ludwig. You’re pretty  
unforgettable!

Alexander Ludwig  
4:08 a.m.  
what the hell are you doing up??

Luca Bella Facinelli  
4:10 a.m.  
Attachment: 1 Image  
Missed the girls too much. Couldn’t  
sleep.

Alexander Ludwig  
4:10 a.m.  
everything okay?

Luca Bella Facinelli  
4:14 a.m.  
Yeah, yeah. Have fun! We’ll see you  
when you get back.

The trip was uneventful; they were flying first-class, and there was plenty of room to stretch out. Leven took a couple of Ambien and instantly falling asleep, telling Alex to wake her up if there was an emergency or he saw Gerard Butler. He couldn’t get his mind to turn off, so he stared out the window and watched the clouds pass them by, one arm around Leven as she slept.

When they touched down in Atlanta, he turned his phone on instantly, waiting a couple of minutes before he checked it to see if Isabelle had texted him. She hadn’t.

There was a car waiting for them at the airport once they got their suitcases from baggage claim, and Alex wondered, not for the first time, what it was like to be rich. Leven didn’t like to talk about how much money she had, but he knew it was a lot. They were staying at the Four Seasons, and Leven had a couple of hours before she had to go to the conference, which was plenty of time to break in the room.

He inexplicably fell asleep, and by the time he woke up the sun was high in the sky, Leven was gone, and his phone was ringing. He grabbed it, not even looking to see who it was before swiping over to accept the FaceTime call.

“Are you sleeping?” Isabelle’s voice filled the room, floating up towards the high ceilings. “Alex, it’s noon!”

He stretched, feeling every single bone in his spine pop after sitting on the airplane. He felt better than he had in weeks. “Whatcha doing, Fuhrman?”

“Well, the good news about Leven being gone is that the clinic is closed and we get a paid vacation,” she said. “So we out here.” She flipped the camera around, showing him the ocean spread out in front of her. Alex wanted to ask who “we” meant, but he didn’t. He had self-control, thank you very much.

“Are you gonna surf?” He could see a board propped up in the sand next to her.

“I’m gonna try,” she said. “It’s been a couple of years but I had a good teacher then.” She smiled at him, the sun shining bright on her face. “And I’ve got an even better teacher now.” If she was talking about Mark, Alex’s head was going to explode. But then she tipped the camera to her left, and Alex could see AnnaSophia sitting there with her. Oh, okay. That was okay then.

“You hear that, Alex?” AnnaSophia said, braiding her hair as she sat there. “I’m a much better teacher than you.”

He laughed. “I can’t argue with that!”

“So how is Atlanta?”

“Well, I haven’t seen anything other than the airport and this room,” Alex said, propping his phone up on the nightstand so he could put on pants. “But I might go to the aquarium today.”

“Of course you will,” she said. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”

He padded over to the window to show Isabelle the view. “I wish you were here,” he told her.

“Well, that would be a little weird, wouldn’t it?” Isabelle said. “To go on a trip with you and your girlfriend.”

Alex rolled his eyes at her. Normally when she said that, he would correct her, tell her that Leven wasn’t his girlfriend, but if he said that now he would be a liar. He was going to have the conversation with her tonight over dinner, but they were in Atlanta together, for God’s sake. She was his girlfriend.

“Don’t worry, Fuhrman,” he said, trying to make a joke out of it. “You’re still number one in my heart.”

“Better be,” Isabelle said simply. She seemed distracted all of a sudden. “I better let you go,” she said.

“Okay.” Alex sat down in a chair by the window, the sun streaming through. He kicked his legs up over the arm of the chair, resting the phone on his knees. “Be careful, okay?”

“Don’t worry,” she said, standing up and adjusting her swimsuit. “I’ll call you later.” And with that, she was gone.

Alex was used to being in an unfamiliar city by himself; he had done so much traveling over the last four years that it was just an old routine at this point. He had lunch and went to the aquarium and ended up at the bar in the hotel lobby, checking his phone and nursing an old fashioned, which was altogether pretty disgusting, but felt more in the mood of the bar than a beer.

He had only been there for about an hour when Leven came rushing in, hooking her purse over the back of a chair and throwing herself down into it. “Hey sweetie,” she said, gesturing to the bartender for a drink. Leven was here a lot. “How was your day?”

Around her, he felt completely inferior, and even though he was technically a scientist too, she felt so far out of his league. “It was good,” he said as the bartender brought Leven a glass of wine, giving her a look that Alex did not appreciate considering he was sitting right the fuck there. “How was the conference?”

She went into a long diatribe about emergency surgery on small animals and the people she met and how nervous she had been, and honestly he could listen to her talk about this all day even though he didn’t know jack about anything she was saying. “So anyways,” she was saying, “I have my second talk tomorrow about opioid-light surgeries and then I’m done.”

Alex could feel his phone ringing in his pocket, pulled it out and glanced at it. It was Isabelle, and he wanted to answer, hovering over the accept button, but eventually just slid his phone onto the table, silencing it and putting it face down. “Where do you want to go to dinner?” he asked.

They ended up at Canoe, sitting in the garden surrounded by lights and looking out at the river. It was fancy, much fancier than he was used to; his normal dinner was a bowl of mac and cheese the size of his head, eaten at midnight on the living room floor, Isabelle next to him trying to steal noodles when he wasn’t paying attention.

Alexander Ludwig  
6:56 p.m.  
this place is fancy and i don’t know  
which fork to kill myself with

Isabelle Fuhrman  
6:59 p.m.  
you’re gonna be fine. which shirt did  
you wear?? not the blue one, please god

Alexander Ludwig  
7:06 p.m.  
what’s wrong with the blue one??

Alexander Ludwig  
7:06 p.m.  
never mind, i don’t even want to know  
Attached: 1 Image

Isabelle Fuhrman  
7:10 p.m.  
you look great. knock em dead

He hadn’t told Isabelle that he was going to have the conversation with Leven, but he didn’t need to. She knew everything about him, and she still would even if he never said a word.

Alex locked his phone, dropping it into his pocket and looking up at Leven. She was studying her menu, the lights draped above them shining off her hair. “Lev,” he blurted out, and she looked up at him, his heart skipping a beat.

“What’s up?” She took a sip of her wine, looking at him over the rim of her glass.

Alex had never in his life been nervous to talk to a girl, but his heart was pounding so loud he thought she might be able to hear it, even over the sound of the river behind them. “What, uh… what are we doing here?”

Leven looked around them. “Having dinner?”

“No.” Alex rubbed the back of his neck, already regretting trying to have this conversation without really thinking about what he was going to say first. He was the dumbest boy in the land. “I mean… you know. You and me.”

She leaned forward, propping her elbow up on the table and resting her chin on her hand, a big grin on her face. She reached across the table with her other hand, lacing her fingers through his. “I just assumed we were together. Don’t you?”

“No - I mean, yes - I mean, yeah. That’s what I thought too.”

Leven hitched a shoulder up, a smile still playing at the corners of her mouth. “I mean, I’m not sleeping with anyone else.”

Alex was saved by the bell - or the waiter, in this case, who came over to take their order and interrupted Alex’s quick internal argument with himself about whether or not to tell Leven about Isabelle or Luca or AnnaSophia. He figured there was nothing to tell, at least about Luca or AnnaSophia. He had been dating them, and now he wasn’t.

Isabelle was another story.

Alex had no idea what came over him at Jackie’s birthday party. Leven was there with him, he was happy, and he meant to go home with her that night. He knew that the reason he had stayed at the apartment was to see if Mark was going to be there, which he realized was a giant cockblock, but that thought process hadn’t had a chance to settle in his alcohol-soaked brain before he made the decision.

And if that hadn’t been enough, he had taken things a step further by sleeping with Isabelle that night. Again, he didn’t know what happened. One second he was out smoking on the balcony, and the next he was in bed with her, looking down at her and feeling like he could never let her go.

It wasn’t fair to her, that was for sure.

But that was then, and this was now. They both had people in their lives, and for the first time ever Alex was dating someone who was self-assured enough to realize that Isabelle was his best friend and that wasn’t going to change. Everything was going to be just fine.

Or at least that’s what he thought.

Leven dropped Alex off in front of his apartment building on Sunday afternoon, leaning over to kiss him goodbye. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she murmured, pulling back. “You should spend some time with Isabelle.”

He kissed her again, tasting bubble gum and vanilla before tearing himself away. He was exhausted, and he knew that the next week of work was going to suck, but he was glad to be back, excited to see Isabelle, couldn’t wait to tell her all about Atlanta.

He unlocked the door to the apartment, pushing it open as he looked down at his phone, which was almost dead. “Ah, fuck,” he muttered, dropping his bags by the door. His phone charger was buried somewhere in his duffel bag. Oh, well. He would just grab Isabelle’s.

The apartment was dark, and Alex realized that he hadn’t even considered the possibility that she wouldn’t be here. Well, he would grab her charger from her room and call her, see where she was and if she would come back.

He didn’t even consider the fact that Isabelle’s door was closed, even though she always left it open. He didn’t notice the faint light coming through the crack under the door, didn’t think about the fact that there was music playing faintly. He was so tired that none of these things registered in his brain until he was pushing the door open and there was a flurry of movement. It took him a couple of moments to figure out what was going on, but once he did there was no going back; he was frozen to the floor, standing there and just making things worse.

“Alex!” Isabelle sat up, pulling the blanket up to her neck like he hadn’t seen her naked a few dozen times. The other person in bed with her had rolled right off the side, hitting the floor with a thump, and Alex didn’t even look at first, assuming that it was Mark. “You’re, uh… you’re home.”

“Shit, I’m-” The apology died in his throat as he realized who the second person was. “Luca?”

* * *

That hadn’t exactly gone like Isabelle had planned it. In fact, the entire weekend had kind of gotten away from her.

When Alex had been packing, she was at Mark’s. He had called her to see where she was, told her that he wanted to see her before he left. But she couldn’t let that happen.

It was good timing, Alex jetting off for the weekend with his rich girlfriend who also happened to be her boss. They hadn’t talked about what had happened the night of Jackie’s birthday, and they certainly hadn’t talked about what their conversation on the beach the morning afterwards. Alex had been acting like everything was normal, spending most of his time at work or with Leven, but being the same old Alex when he was back at the apartment.

She didn’t want to talk about it. That wasn’t the issue. She just wanted everything to go back to the way it was. The problem was that she didn’t know which part of their relationship she wanted to go back to, the best friend part or the friends with benefits part.

Mark was great and she was having fun, but whenever she was with him, she couldn’t get rid of the thought that it didn’t feel like what being with Alex felt like.

She didn’t know what to do when she woke up Thursday morning and didn’t have to immediately rush out the door to go to work. She was contemplating whether or not she should get up for a run or just stay in bed all day when AnnaSophia texted her.

She spent the day with AnnaSophia, relearning how to surf. Alex had taught her a couple of years ago when she went to spend Christmas with his family during their junior year of college, but that had been a couple of years ago and she hadn’t had that much luck with it. Alex was a great surfer, but he was a horrible teacher, assuming that yelling “Fuhrman! Just stand up!” would somehow, miraculously, make her able to stand up.

Isabelle hadn’t realized that AnnaSophia and Luca had become such good friends; she certainly wasn’t expecting it, but Luca showed up when she was done with work, joining them on the beach. At first, Isabelle was very aware of the dynamic, that Alex had brought them all together because he had been sleeping with all of them, but after hanging out with the two of them all day she damn near forgot about it.

She certainly forgot about it later that night. The three of them ended up back at the apartment, Jackie coming over when she got done with work, still in her scrubs. They stayed up late and ate raw cookie dough even as Jackie yelled at them to stop and watched Gilmore Girls until they all fall asleep on the living room floor.

Isabelle woke up around two o’clock in the morning with a stiff neck and an aching back. AnnaSophia and Jackie were sacked out on the couches; Luca was on the other side of the coffee table, sleeping in a nest of all of the pillows and blankets she could find. Isabelle crawled over to her, shaking her shoulder gently. “Luca,” she hissed. “Luca, wake up!”

Luca jerked awake, sitting up and barely missing smacking her head on the coffee table. “What? What’s happening?”

“Come on.” Isabelle pushed herself to her feet, holding out her hand to help Luca up. “You can sleep in Alex’s room.”

But when she opened the door to Alex’s room, she could barely even see the bed, piled high with clothes and extra suitcases and damp towels. For as OCD as the boy was, he was incapable of keeping his room clean. Isabelle shut the door. “On second thought, you can just sleep in my room.”

Luca crawled into Isabelle’s bed, putting her phone on the nightstand and falling asleep almost immediately. Isabelle didn’t remember falling asleep, but she must have at some point because she woke up to the sun streaming in through the window and falling across the bed, Luca’s arm hooked tightly around her waist. She didn’t move, trying to figure out how to extricate herself without waking Luca up.

As she was trying to pull her arm out, Luca shifted, moving closer, her breath falling across the back of Isabelle’s neck. She managed to wiggle her way out, her skin on fire where Luca was touching her, shutting the door behind her as she went out to the kitchen.

Jackie and AnnaSophia were already gone, the blankets folded neatly and stacked on the couch with the pillows. They couldn’t have been gone long; there was fresh coffee in the pot. Thank God for Jackie.

She poured herself a cup, going out onto the balcony and checking her phone. There was nothing from Alex, not that she expected there would be. Yesterday had been good for her; it had been a full day and she hadn’t had any time to think about what he was doing. But now, alone with her thoughts, it was all she could focus on.

She sat there on the balcony for a while, watching the sun climb higher in the sky, seagulls circling around. She could have sat there all day, only going back inside when she heard her bedroom door open and close.

“Good morning,” Luca said. She poured herself a cup of coffee, drinking it black. “Sorry if I spooned you in my sleep. I can get a little handsy.”

“Just a little,” Isabelle said, her face red, she was sure.

Luca swirled the coffee around in her cup, taking another big gulp and glancing at the clock over the stove. “Sorry to just up and run,” she said. “But I’ve got to get to the school.”

“Oh, yeah, no problem,” Isabelle said. She didn’t know what it was about being alone with Luca that turned her into an idiot. Luca put her empty cup into the sink, running some water in it before coming over to kiss Isabelle on the cheek.

Or at least she thought Luca meant to kiss her on the cheek. That was not what happened. Isabelle wasn’t sure if she moved at the last second or if Luca had been intending it all along, but all of a sudden they were kissing, really kissing, Luca backing her up against the counter and touching her like she was made of gold. It only lasted for a couple of moments, Isabelle not wanting it to end, but Luca pulled back.

“I’ll see you later,” she said casually, the roughness in her voice betraying her. She stopped in the doorway, looked back and bit her lip before disappearing down the hallway, the door falling shut behind her.

Holy shit.

Of course Isabelle told Jackie immediately, calling her while she was at work. She didn’t expect Jackie to pick up, was going to just leave a voicemail, but the phone only rang once before Jackie answered it. “You’re alive.”

“Thanks to you and the coffee,” Isabelle said. “Although my neck isn’t too happy from sleeping on the floor.” She cracked it, knowing she would be paying for that one for days. “So I have to tell you something.”

“Uh oh.” Jackie’s voice crackled over the phone line; the reception in the hospital sucked. “Should I sit down?”

“Don’t be dramatic.” Isabelle could still feel Luca’s lips on hers as she told Jackie what had happened.

“Don’t be dramatic?” Jackie shrieked when she was done. There was a shuffling in the background, Jackie yelling at someone on her end. “You can’t keep dropping this stuff on me and expecting me to be calm about it!” Isabelle waited for her to stop freaking out, knowing that the end would come eventually. “What are you gonna do? How do you feel? Are you going to tell Alex?”

“I don’t know,” Isabelle said, spinning Alex’s notebook around on the counter. “I don’t know the answer to any of those questions honestly.”

She heard the hospital PA system booming in the background. “Ah, shit,” Jackie said. “I’ve gotta run.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Isabelle said. “We’ll talk later.”

“I’ll come over when I get home,” Jackie said before she hung up, leaving Isabelle alone with her thoughts.

At least she was telling the truth; she had no idea how she felt. Isabelle had always thought Luca was pretty; she had had many conversations with Alex about that. And they had always had the same type in girls, although this situation had never come up before. Obviously she was going to tell him. She had to tell him. Although, Isabelle thought now, who knew if there was even anything to tell? One kiss didn’t mean anything.

By the time Alex burst into her room on Sunday afternoon, they had done a lot more than kiss, although they hadn’t really talked about it at all. Isabelle wasn’t expecting him to come back so early, and she certainly wasn’t expecting him to bust into her room like a bat out of hell. If she had known that’s how it was going to go down, she would have given him a little warning.

“Alex,” she hissed at him through gritted teeth. He was frozen, eyes wide, staring at them like he had just seen his own ghost. “Can you get out?”

He blinked at her once, twice, the moments stretching on for what seemed like hours. Luca, still sitting on the floor, pulled her shirt on over her head, suddenly breaking Alex out of his trance. He whipped around, slamming the door shut behind him. Isabelle fell backwards, a huff of a sigh leaving her mouth. “Fuck.”

Luca stood up, grabbing her shorts and tugging them on. “You want me to talk to him?”

“No.” Isabelle sighed again, pinching the bridge of her nose to try to stave off the headache that was threatening to rise to the surface. “I better do it.”

“Okay,” Luca said, sitting down on the edge of Isabelle’s bed. “I’ll wait for you.”

After spending the weekend with Luca, Isabelle could easily see why Alex had been so smitten with her. She was funny and smart and kind, and if Isabelle didn’t know Leven so well she would have ripped Alex a new one for letting this girl get away. Then again, his loss was her gain, so she couldn’t exactly complain.

She followed Luca out of her bedroom, her legs heavy. “Hey, Alex,” she heard Luca say before she could see him, rounding the corner into the living room. He was sitting on the couch, staring straight ahead at a blank wall. “I’ll call you later,” Luca said, squeezing Isabelle’s hand before letting herself out the front door.

Isabelle sat down next to Alex, clearing her throat. “Good trip?”

Alex turned to her, almost robotically. “Fuhrman. That was Luca.”

“Yes.” She pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them to her. “About that.”

“It’s fine,” he said quickly. “We don’t need to talk about it.”

“Alex.”

“I’m really tired, Fuhrman,” he said, standing up. “I’m gonna go crash.”

“Okay.” She wanted to say something, anything, wanted him to sit there and talk to her, but she didn’t. The words wouldn’t come out and she couldn’t make them.

Leven Rambin  
8:23 a.m.  
Running late, but I’m on my way!

Alexander Ludwig  
8:24 a.m.  
get here soon… i’m freaking out

Leven Rambin  
8:25 a.m.  
I’ll be there in fifteen. Don’t freak out.  
Everything is going to go perfectly.

Alexander Ludwig  
8:26 a.m.  
you have far too much faith in me

Leven Rambin  
8:27 a.m.  
Wrong. I have just enough for us to share.

Leven Rambin  
8:45 a.m.  
Here!

Isabelle hadn’t seen Leven yet this morning. There weren’t any surgeries scheduled until the afternoon, Leven’s entire morning completely blocked off on the calendar. “Mark, do you know where Leven is?”

He was sitting at the front desk, feet kicked up on the counter, computer keyboard balanced in his lap as he wrote up his reports from the day before. “Not a clue,” he said, frowning as he typed. “Why, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” Isabelle said, flopping down into the chair next to him and pulling out her phone. “Just curious.”

She pulled up Instagram, Leven’s name popping up at the top of her feed. Isabelle squinted at the picture, Alex’s arm around Leven, the two of them at the lagoon. She swiped left, another picture popping up, this time of Leven with one of the dolphins.

@levenrambin: There’s nothing better than getting to see my favorite guy work with his favorite girls! Such a big day for him and I couldn’t be more proud.

Isabelle frowned. Why was today a big day? And why didn’t she know what the fuck was going on?

Normally she would just text Alex, but he had been back from Atlanta for two weeks and had barely spoken to her since. When he was at the apartment, which wasn’t often, he was quiet, not the usual Alex who turned his music up really high and yelled for her to come keep him company while he caught up on laundry. She hadn’t yet gotten up the courage to ask him why he was mad at her, and it didn’t really matter because she was sure she already knew.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
10:22 a.m.  
how is your day going?

Luca Bella Facinelli  
10:26 a.m.  
Super busy! We released Glimmer this  
morning, so kind of bittersweet.

Isabelle felt like a shock went through her veins, her blood running cold even though her face was hot. Why wouldn’t Alex ask her to come?

Luca Bella Facinelli  
10:30 a.m.  
I didn’t realize Alex was going to ask  
Leven to come or I totally would have  
brought you!

Isabelle Fuhrman  
10:31 a.m.  
no worries

She was not expecting Alex to come home that night, spread out the laundry baskets in the living room so that she could sort the clothes, and she got more and more in her head as the hours went by, working herself up so that by the time the key turned in the lock, she was spoiling for a fight. She was sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by towels, and he barely even glanced at her as he went into his room. “Alex!”

“What’s up?”

He didn’t come out of his room, which made Isabelle even madder. She got up, throwing down the towel she was holding and stomping towards his bedroom door. “Alex!”

He was sprawled on his back on his bed, phone propped up on his chest. “What?” he snapped, sitting up.

Oh, hell no.

She meant to come in soft; even when they were mad at each other, they always managed to talk things through. It did not happen that way. “What the hell is your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem,” he said coldly.

What Alex failed to realize was that Isabelle knew him better than he knew how to hide his feelings.

“You’re so full of shit.” Normally she would go into his room, sit down on his bed, but even that would feel weird at this point. “You act like we haven’t been best friends for four years.”

“Oh, really?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Because you’re the one sleeping with my…”

“Your what, Alex?” Isabelle crossed her arms over her chest, her heart pounding. They were really doing this. After weeks of tiptoeing around each other, ignoring the obvious cracks in their relationship, it was like a dam breaking. It was all about to come out, and there was no stopping it, no turning back, no shoving it back under the rug. “She wasn’t your girlfriend.”

Isabelle knew that technically she was the one in the wrong. Intellectually, she was well aware of that. But Alex’s words from their conversation on the beach had been burned into her brain for the last month, and every night he spent away from the apartment only further solidified the fact that he was doing the same thing he had promised her he would never do again.

When Alex had a girlfriend, he turned into a different person. It had happened with Nicole, and it had happened with Kristy. Isabelle had spent so long telling herself that Leven wasn’t like either of them, and that was true, but Alex was still Alex.

Technically, it was Isabelle’s fault that Alex had ever met Kristy in the first place. Isabelle had been chasing after this softball player in her genetics class for weeks, and she had finally managed to convince Alex to go to a party with her after midterms were over and he could stop freaking out about whether or not he was going to graduate with a perfect GPA.

“Come on, Alex.” She was sprawled out on her stomach on his bed, flipping through Netflix and trying to find something to watch. “Midterms are over, and you can stop studying for one night.”

He had his back to her, was sitting at his desk with every textbook he owned for the semester spread out in front of him. “How are you not freaking out more? It’s senior year, Fuhrman.”

“Yes, exactly.” She contemplated throwing a pillow at his back but she didn’t want him to bite her off; she needed him to come with her to this party. Instead, she grabbed it, propping her elbows up on it. “It’s senior year. We should be having a little fun.”

Later, after everything had gone down, she would think back to that moment. If she hadn’t forced Alex to go out, he never would have met Kristy, and their lives would have been a little easier.

They got to the softball girls’ house a little after ten thirty, Isabelle taking extra time on her hair and makeup and outfit, Alex getting more and more impatient by the second. She knew that once he had a couple of beers in him, he would be totally fine, but right now he was being a real pain in her ass. Even so, she slipped her arm around his waist as they walked up the sidewalk to the front door, his arm fitting perfectly around her shoulders.

Isabelle got much drunker than she had planned, partly due to the jungle juice that was present in abundance and partly due to the fact that she was nervous, scanning each room for Gaia as they entered. She didn’t see her anywhere, was going to tell Alex that he was right and they should just go back to his apartment, but he seemed like he was actually having a good time now that he was out.

Normally Alex watched her when she drank, made sure she didn’t have too much, knew she needed to be cut off long before she did, but he was distracted by all of the softball players walking around and she started sneaking shots of Bacardi Raspberry behind his back. She knew she was going to throw up before it happened, muscling her way out of the packed living room and out the front door, barely making it onto the sidewalk before everything in her stomach came back up.

Unfortunately, there was someone standing there.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Alex said from behind her. “Fuhrman, are you okay?”

His hand was warm on her back, and she stayed crouched on the sidewalk, knowing she had just thrown up on someone but also knowing that if she stood up it was just going to happen again. “Fuck, I’m sorry,” she heard Alex say above her.

“Don’t worry about it.” It was a girl’s voice that answered him. “It wouldn’t be a party if someone didn’t get thrown up on, right?”

And that was how Alex met the girl who tried to ruin Isabelle’s life.

* * *

“Why do you even care?” Isabelle said hotly. “You have a girlfriend.”

Alex honestly couldn’t believe that they were at this point right now, that they had circled around each other awkwardly for weeks before Isabelle exploded. He should have known it would happen sooner or later; she had never been good at hiding what she was feeling. He, on the other hand, chose to live his life under a banner of denial, and that’s what he had been doing.

“So what?” Alex snapped. He stood up, pushing his hands through his hair. All he had wanted to do was come home and go to sleep; it had been an incredibly emotional, incredibly long day and he was exhausted. “I still dated her.”

Alex knew that he wasn’t really pissed off that Isabelle was sleeping with Luca; sure, it was a little weird, but Luca was a good person and Isabelle deserved a really good person. He didn’t really know what his problem was, but right now the thought of Isabelle with her made him crazy. He wondered if this was how she had felt back in college when he was dating everything that moved.

That was really the bottom line; he felt left behind.

Isabelle rolled her eyes at him. He loved her all the time, but holy shit, she could piss him off like nobody else could. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No, Isabelle,” he said, giving her a big sigh and turning his back on her which he knew would just piss her off even more, but he couldn’t help himself. “We’re adults. I’m fine, and you can do whatever you want.”

“You sure do,” she muttered.

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked, whipping around.

“How was your day, Alex?” she asked, the sarcasm laced through her words. “Anything exciting happen?”

Alex swallowed, biting his lip. He should have invited her. He knew that. He could have at least told her what was going on. But he didn’t want to see her with Luca, didn’t want to be reminded that he was no longer the most important person in her life. He was petty, and he knew it. Shouldn’t the fact that he admitted it count for something?

“It was fine,” he said, sure that he sounded as guilty as he felt.

“You really want to sit here and bitch about me because I’m finally dating someone, which I recall you telling me to do dozens of times, when you’re the one who once again got a girlfriend and forgot about me.”

“I haven’t forgotten about you. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“When was the last time you were here for more than twenty-four hours?” Isabelle asked him, raising her eyebrow, and he knew she was right. “When was the last time we actually hung out, just the two of us?”

Alex knew the answer well; it had been weeks, and they hadn’t been alone together for more than a couple of minutes since he had started dating Leven. “You can’t put that all on me.”

“I can and I’m going to.”

He was so not in the mood to do this right now. And even though he knew that leaving would just piss her off even more, he grabbed his backpack off of his desk chair where he had thrown it when he came in. “I can’t do this right now, Fuhrman,” he said, his voice low, and he could barely look her in the eye.

Even so, he made himself stop in the doorway to his room where she was leaning against the frame, glaring up at him. He wanted to reach out and touch her or say that he was sorry or tell her that he loved her, but none of that seemed adequate. He was so close to her that he could feel the anger coming off of her in waves.

“Just go, Alex,” she said, her voice cold. “That’s what you do best.”

She was right, so he went.

Thirty minutes later he was in his girlfriend’s bed, and he was still thinking about the fight even as she was going down on him. What the hell was wrong with him? He laced his fingers through her hair, closing his eyes and trying to concentrate on what she was doing.

He and Isabelle did not fight. The closest they came was when the Nicole shit went down, and instead of fighting they just didn’t talk for twenty-eight days. It was the worst twenty-eight days of Alex’s life, no question. He couldn’t go through that again.

The truth was that their friendship was still recovering from the Kristy situation, and even Isabelle didn’t really know what had gone down, how deep everything had been.

Like he always did, Alex jumped right in with both feet and his eyes shut tight. At first, everything was great. It was always great in the beginning. He made a conscious decision to not act the same way he had with Nicole, made sure to include Isabelle in everything and spend time with her on his own. He made it very clear to Kristy from the very beginning that Isabelle was his best friend and that wasn’t going to change.

She seemed to get it.

Seemed was the operative word.

Alex didn’t really realize that Isabelle was fading away in front of him until it was almost too late. He had been dating Kristy since the day after they met outside the softball house; once they had gotten Isabelle back to her apartment and in bed, he took her to Nicollet, one of the only places in Dinkytown that was open twenty-four hours. They ate waffles with whipped cream and chocolate chips, and afterwards Alex walked her to her front door, kissing her as the sun came up and painted the sky cotton candy pink.

The fighting started not too long after that, bickering that turned into ignored phone calls and the silent treatment. Kristy always had something to say, always had something to complain about, but she wasn’t complaining about Isabelle, so Alex could put up with it.

What he didn’t realize was that she was. She just wasn’t doing it to him.

It was almost graduation. Alex and Isabelle were applying for jobs, and Alex already knew that he was going to ask her to move with him. Kristy still had a year left, and she was getting more and more antsy about Alex leaving her behind in Minnesota, kept picking fights and acting like a brat. She barely even spoke to him the day they graduated, sulking in the background as Alex took pictures with Isabelle and his parents.

One of their friends had a huge party that night, the three of them going together. Isabelle had been acting weird for a couple of weeks, seemed quiet and distant, and tonight was no exception. He figured it was because everything was changing and she didn’t handle change all that well, and he kept planning on talking to her about it. Now that finals were over and he could relax, he was going to. Maybe tomorrow.

She disappeared almost immediately, spotting a couple of her friends in the pre-vet program and peeling off to join them, one of them pushing a beer into her palm. Alex just shrugged, keeping a firm grasp around Kristy’s waist as they moved through the crowded house.

He had thought a lot about what would happen after graduation. All he was sure of was that he wasn’t sure of anything. He wasn’t going to break up with Kristy when he moved to wherever it was that he was going to move. They could do a year of long distance; they had already talked about it. As much as she pissed him off, he loved her. He couldn’t help it.

At some point during the night, he lost Kristy too. He was standing around the keg with some of the people in his program, the lights in the kitchen bright compared to the rest of the house, dim and smoky. It all of a sudden hit him, as he was standing there with his friends, that this was really all over, that for twenty-three years his life had been planned out down to the second, and now there was just darkness looming in front of him.

It made him a little panicky, to be honest.

He excused himself from the group, letting himself out the back door and onto the porch. All the big old student houses in Dinkytown had giant wrap around porches, something Alex was going to miss when he moved. There were so many little things he hadn’t even considered yet, things he saw and did everyday that suddenly he wouldn’t see or do anymore.

He shook a cigarette out of the pack in his back pocket, thankful that Isabelle wasn’t around to see him. He kept quitting; really, he did. But there had been so much stress in his life lately between finals and job hunting and Kristy and graduation; one cigarette now and then wouldn’t hurt him.

Alex sat down in one of the splintered, rain-worn Adirondack chairs, cupping his hand around the end of his cigarette as he lit it, taking a big drag and blowing the smoke out into the cool spring air. He closed his eyes, trying to breathe deep enough to dissolve the knot sitting square in his chest. The calm didn’t last long, and his eyes popped open when he heard Kristy’s voice.

He couldn’t see her, and he was sure she couldn’t see him behind the porch rail, but her voice was coming from somewhere in the darkness off to the side of the house. He thought maybe he should say something, call her name, let her know she was there, but then he heard what she was saying.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said, and Alex had heard that tone many times, was surprised that ice crystals weren’t forming on the railing in front of him. “We talked about this.”

“We didn’t talk about anything.” Alex felt a shock go through his veins at the sound of Isabelle’s voice. “You yelled, and I listened. There was no discussion.”

“There doesn’t need to be a discussion,” Kristy hissed. Alex leaned forward, trying to see through the railing, catching a glimpse of their backs through the slats. “I’ve told you this at least a dozen times by now. You’re not going with him.”

There was a long pause, and Alex desperately wished he could see Isabelle’s face. He was frantically trying to piece together what the hell was going on.

“Yes,” Isabelle said calmly, and Alex knew from experience that that would just piss off Kristy more. “I am. He’s my best friend.”

And that’s when Kristy really went for it. “You mean nothing to Alex,” she said, her voice like ice. “You will never mean anything to Alex. I’m going to make him choose: me or you. And I think we both know who he is going to pick.”

“Okay.” He was shocked at how calm Isabelle was being, and a little turned on to be honest. Kristy was scary when she got like this; even Alex had a hard time standing up to her. “You do what you have to do.”

He could hear one of them walking towards the house; he wasn’t sure which one, and he quickly stubbed out his cigarette on the wooden floorboards, an inch of ash trailing off the end because he had been too distracted to smoke it. He made it back into the kitchen before either one of them saw him, but when Kristy came up to him, putting her arm around his waist, it took everything he had not to pull back, her words playing over and over in his head.

Sure enough, the next day when Alex was packing to go to Miami for his interview, she showed up at his bedroom door, narrowing her eyes when she saw what he was doing. “I need to talk to you.”

He didn’t look up, just kept throwing clothes across the room into his open suitcase. He had texted Isabelle a dozen times since yesterday and hadn’t heard anything back; he hadn’t seen her after eavesdropping on their conversation, assumed she got a ride back to her apartment or ended up staying in some softball player’s bed. “Okay. Talk.”

Normally when Kristy got angry about something, Alex stayed silent, let her yell about it for a while, rode it out until she got tired or moved on to something else. That was not how it was going to play out this time. He was going to have a say.

He thought maybe she would beat around the bush, but she went straight for the jugular. “Isabelle can’t go with you.”

Finally, he looked up, clearing his throat. “Say what now?”

“To wherever it is that you’re going. Miami or Seattle or San Diego or Portland. She can’t go.”

“Why the fuck not?”

Kristy looked surprised, raising her eyebrows. “Because I don’t want her to.” Alex had so much he wanted to say, was considering his words carefully, not wanting to say something that he couldn’t take back. He had been up all night, going back and forth in his head, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. They had been together for eight months, not an insignificant amount of time, and he honestly thought that they would make it long distance; it was just a year after all. But every time he thought about staying with her, his stomach flipped over, her words to Isabelle crystal clear in his brain. Before he could say anything, she spoke up again. “You have to choose.”

“Choose what?” Alex said, even though he already knew. He wanted her to say it.

“Choose. Her or me.”

“Okay.” He stared at her, his gaze measured and even. There was no question in his mind what the right answer was. “I choose her.”

Kristy’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

“Fuhrman. I choose her.” Alex turned back to the pile of clothes in front of him. When she didn’t move, he looked up at her again. “You can go.”

He remembered that moment very clearly, along with all of the moments that followed. They were on the plane to Miami for their interviews when he told Isabelle that he had broken up with her, said he didn’t want to be tied down when they moved. She still had no idea what the real reason was, still didn’t know that he had heard what Kristy had said to her. He wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t face the fact that, yet again, Isabelle was treated like shit by the girls he brought into their life.

Because that was the real truth of it: it was their life. Not his or hers. Ever since they met, it had been a collective effort, and they were so intertwined at this point that there would be no going back. Not that he wanted to. He couldn’t imagine his life without her.

She was his home, no matter where they were.

* * *

Isabelle woke up to someone jumping on her bed.

She felt like she had a hangover, even though she hadn’t had a sip of alcohol the night before, the anger acting like its own self-contained drug. Alex hadn’t texted her after he left, and she didn’t send any of the dozens of messages that she typed out, chickening out at the last second every time and hitting delete. She was so not in the mood.

“Jackie,” she mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut tightly and trying to block out the light. “Go the fuck home. It’s too early for this.”

“Well, I would,” said a familiar voice. “But I just spent a couple of hours on an airplane, so I feel like you at least owe me breakfast.”

Madeline.

Isabelle shot up like a rocket to see her sister standing on the edge of her bed, grinning hugely, her suitcase dumped in the corner of Isabelle’s room. “Oh my God!” she shrieked, jumping up and tackling her into the mattress. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“It’s fall break,” Madeline said. “And I missed my sister.”

Madeline had been taking classes for her master’s all summer, hadn’t had a break that lasted more than a couple of days, and Isabelle missed her like crazy. Of all of the things that she had left behind in the Midwest, Madeline was the most important.

“Holy shit,” Isabelle said, hugging her again and well aware that every word coming out of her mouth was a curse word. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Where’s Alex?” Madeline asked.

Isabelle swallowed. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Well, can you tell it to me over some waffles? I’m starving.”

Madeline Fuhrman  
8:28 a.m.  
Attached: 1 Image

Alexander Ludwig  
8:30 a.m.  
what?

Alexander Ludwig  
8:30 a.m.  
wait

Alexander Ludwig  
8:30 a.m.  
what the fuck are you doing in my  
room???

Madeline Fuhrman  
8:30 a.m.  
Surprise, bitch! I’m in Miami!

Alexander Ludwig  
8:32 a.m.  
shut the fuck up

Madeline Fuhrman  
8:35 a.m.  
I miss you. Come meet us for  
breakfast?

Alexander Ludwig  
8:36 a.m.  
ah shit. wish i could but i have to get  
to the lab.

Madeline Fuhrman  
8:38 a.m.  
The lab… look at you being a real  
live adult.

Alexander Ludwig  
8:40 a.m.  
i know. it’s unprecedented. see you  
tonight?

Madeline Fuhrman  
8:41 a.m.  
Duh.

“I know what the problem is,” Madeline said after Isabelle told her the whole story, starting back with the first night they slept together, moving through Luca and AnnaSophia and Leven and Mark, and ending with the fight they had last night.

“Well, please,” Isabelle said, shoving another bite of waffle in her mouth. “Do tell. Because I have no idea what the hell is going on.”

Madeline looked at her like she was an idiot. “It’s pretty simple, Iz,” she said. “You’re in love with him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/mandaestella/playlist/15dXTMax1YkfJCIE9fY3b1?si=88cRODQBR-Wq7VPp8EccPw


	5. recklessly follow the sunset dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> / just a couple lonely kids  
> / tryna find a crown that fits  
> / call us the kings and the queens of the dead end streets  
> / just a couple kids  
> / we got no plans  
> / recklessly follow the sunset dreaming  
> / give me tomorrow and I’ll take your hand  
> / two rebels, ride or die, two rebels, you and i  
> rebels by ivy adara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a totally self-indulgent fic that i wrote to cleanse from my last nano project and it turned it something a lot longer and a lot more convoluted than i have planned. giant thank you to everyone who has read this or commented or left kudos - it means more to me than I can express. 
> 
> @ emily & gracie who championed the hell out of this fic, even when it was just me saying "okay so i want to write a fwb au." you two are the lights of my life.
> 
> xx a

Jack Quaid  
7:16 p.m.  
Full brawl beat down at Denny’s tonight,  
2 a.m., don’t miss it.

Isabelle Fuhrman  
7:17 p.m.  
what the fuck, who are we fighting  
at denny’s?

Jack Quaid  
7:18 p.m.  
I dunno, there’s gotta be someone who  
will step to us.

Having Madeline around was exactly what Isabelle needed, even if her sister was spouting the kind of nonsense that she did at breakfast on her first morning there.

“No. I’m not,” Isabelle said immediately, frowning at Madeline. “Don’t you think I would know if I was in love with him?”

Madeline smiled up at the waiter refilling her coffee cup. “No, I don’t,” she said, once he had left. She dumped in a bunch of cream and sugar, stirring it around. “I think you’re both idiots.”

Isabelle tilted her head, glaring at her sister. “Well, that’s nice, Madeline.”

After a while, they moved on from the topic, not soon enough for Isabelle’s liking, but it didn’t matter because it was all she thought about for the rest of the weekend. Did she love Alex? Absolutely. Was she in love with Alex? Absolutely not. That’s not something you didn’t know you felt. Madeline was out of her damn mind.

They all went to Denny’s that night, Madeline charming the pants off all of her friends, just like she always did. They all crowded around a table, throwing napkins and straw wrappers at each other, Jack knocking over Jackie’s glass of milk while telling a story, gesturing wildly. It was almost perfect. Even though Alex was sitting directly across the table from her, sandwiched between Leven and Mark, he barely even looked in her direction, meeting her eyes only by accident and making sure not to stretch his legs out under the table.

That part of it was infuriating.

Madeline left too soon, flying back to Minnesota on Wednesday morning to resume her normal life. Isabelle borrowed Luca’s car to drive her to the airport, holding onto her tight at departures and watching her go through the glass doors and disappear out of sight.

She cried that night, Luca waking up in the middle of the night and rolling over, hooking her chin over Isabelle’s shoulder and holding her tight.

Summer rolled into fall, the beginning of October coming before she knew it. She was barely even speaking to Alex, or vice versa, the only times they talked when they needed milk or had to pay the bills. It was even worse than the times they weren’t talking at all; he was so close to her but he felt so far away.

She was seeing Mark less and less outside of work, spending most of her time with Luca. He seemed fine with it. It’s not like he was the great love of her life.

But as much fun as Isabelle was having with Luca, she couldn’t help but think sometimes that she was sleeping on Alex’s side of the bed.

* * *

Alex hated everything about what was going on right now.

Well, not everything. Actually, for the most part, things were good. He had Leven. He was kicking ass at his job. He was in a beautiful city where he got to surf every day and fall asleep to the sound of ocean waves outside his window.

But his best friend wasn’t speaking to him, and he didn’t know what to do to fix that.

He knew that everything that had happened was his fault. He was the one who had kissed her first. He was the one who had initiated. He was the one who had stupidly blurted out that he was in love with her in the middle of sex. He was the one who had ended things. He was the one who hadn’t invited her to the school for Glimmer’s release, even though he knew he should have, even though he knew that it would hurt her not to be there. And he was certainly the one who had gotten upset that she had moved on.

He didn’t know why. He had thought about it over and over and over, laying things out in his head and trying to make sense of them. He knew he had been an asshole, but it was like he was having an out of body experience, looking down at himself treating Isabelle like shit and completely powerless to stop it.

He was sitting on the edge of the platform at the lagoon, looking out at the ocean early one morning when Luca plopped down next to him, splashing water everywhere. She bumped her knee with his. “What’s wrong?”

Alex was a hypocrite, that’s what was wrong, and he was one for so many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he and Luca were even closer than ever when he still couldn’t look at Isabelle without thinking of the two of them together. “Ah, nothing,” he said, squinting at the glare of the sun behind her. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

He certainly could not tell her, had no idea if she knew that Alex and Isabelle had been sleeping together at the same time he had been with Luca. He had really gotten himself into some sort of mess.

Clove and Cressida were out in the ocean, the underwater fence the only thing keeping them from swimming away. Alex could see the two of them faintly in the distance, seagulls circling overhead and the sun rising overhead, bouncing off the waves and practically blinding him when it hit his eyes.

He just wanted his best friend back.

Luca rested her chin on his shoulder for just a moment. “I’m here, Alex. Whenever you want to talk.” They sat there for another few seconds before she jumped up. “But until then, we better get to work.”

Alex saw Isabelle in everything he did. Normally, he texted her twenty-five times a day, sending her pictures of the girls or asking her what she wanted him to pick up for dinner or to tell her something funny that he found on Instagram when he was supposed to be writing his reports. Even now, after they had gone weeks with a chilly silence between them, he still found himself opening up his text messages and typing her name before remembering that they didn’t do that anymore.

She wasn’t his anymore. So every time, he just put his phone back in his pocket, trying not to think about the fact that he had single-handedly ruined the best thing in his life.

The good news was that they were busier than ever. With Glimmer gone, they had an open spot and Luca had been working for weeks on getting an older dolphin transferred from an aquarium in Texas. Their new master plan for Clove was to keep her with a dolphin who had lost a baby, but it had taken them a while to find one, and the paperwork was taking even longer. Luca was a saint for doing all of it.

He sat with her late at night while she hunched over her desk, getting her coffee and ordering pizza. Lately they had been spending more time together than he did with anyone else, even Leven. Sometimes he just sat there and looked at her if she wasn’t paying attention to him, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t upset that Isabelle was dating her. It never really seemed to work.

So for now, instead of rehashing the same feelings over and over and not coming to a conclusion, he just pushed them to the side, focusing on work and Leven and Luca and pretending everything was okay.

Leven went to another conference, leaving Alex behind this time because he was so swamped with his own work. He moved silently around his own apartment, wanting to say something, anything, to Isabelle but not knowing what. He worked late every night, getting home around ten or eleven or midnight and falling into bed, barely managing to plug his phone into the charger before he fell asleep.

One night he got home around eleven, knew Luca wouldn’t be there because he had left her at the lab, still doing research, her notes spread out around her. Usually when he got home Isabelle was asleep, or at least in her room with the door shut, but tonight she was awake and in the kitchen, pulling her shoes on.

“Hey,” he said, and when she looked up at him, he felt his breath catch in his chest. It had been so long since they had had a conversation, since they had even looked at each other with anything more than a passing glance. “What are you doing?”

“Gonna go grocery shopping.”

He glanced at the clock over the stove. “It’s eleven o’clock.”

“Yeah, well.” She pulled her hair up into a ponytail. “Not enough people saw how good I looked today.”

Alex cleared his throat, and he thought about asking her if she wanted company, but was already halfway out the door. “Okay,” he said. “See you later.”

When his phone rang in the middle of the night, he immediately bolted upright, his first thought was that something happened to Isabelle, Luca’s name popping up on his screen, and he could barely swipe over to answer the call because his hands were shaking. “Hello?” he said, his voice cracking from sleep and panic.

“Hey!” She didn’t sound panicked, like her girlfriend was sitting in a hospital somewhere. “Whatcha doing?”

“Luca.” He pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the time. “It is two thirty-seven in the fucking morning. I was sleeping.”

“And now you’re not,” she said cheerfully. “Get up. We got a rescue call.”

* * *

Isabelle passed out the second she got back from the grocery store, barely managing to unload her bags into the fridge and the cabinets before falling asleep. All this loneliness was really tiring after a while. Tiptoeing around Alex like he didn’t exist was no easy chore.

Leven was gone again, speaking at another conference in New Hampshire or Delaware or Rhode Island. Isabelle couldn’t remember which tiny state she was in, but it all meant the same thing: paid vacation. She woke up early the next morning, took her time getting up and showering and making breakfast. Alex was already gone, had probably left early this morning so that he wouldn’t have to see her or make awkward small talk over the coffee maker.

She was on her second cup, reading a People magazine that someone (Jackie) had left on her kitchen counter when there was a pounding knock on her door. She frowned, glancing towards her room and thinking that maybe she should grab her phone, which she hadn’t looked at yet this morning, when she heard Jack’s voice through the door.

“Isabelle! Are you in there?” It was a Tuesday morning, and Jack should most definitely be getting ready for work. And yet, here he was, trying to break Isabelle’s door down.

She hopped down from the kitchen stool, unlocking the door and pulling it open. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

Jack’s face was white, his tie half-done, like he had given up in the middle of putting it on, jacket nowhere to be found. “Isabelle. There’s been an accident.”

For the first twenty-three years of her life, she hadn’t know what it felt like for your heart to stop in your chest. Now she did. “Jackie?”

Jack shook his head, his mouth pressed thin in a tight line. “Alex.”

It was a wonder that she didn’t just pass out on the spot, drop right to the ground in her doorway. Maybe she looked like she might, because Jack reached out and grabbed her arm, her knees buckling as he did so. “Jackie is there with him at Jackson,” Jack said quickly. “And Luca. But he’s asking for you. We gotta go.”

There was too much happening, her head starting to spin. “I… what… he asked for me?” She knew that was not the most important question that she needed answered right now, but it was the one thing she needed to know. “Are you sure?”

“Very,” Jack said. “Heard it myself, when I was on the phone with Jackie. What do you need? Phone? Keys?”

“I…” Isabelle looked behind her into the apartment as she pulled her tennis shoes on. “No. Let’s go.”

Isabelle gripped Jack’s hand the entire ride to the hospital, trying to concentrate on the road in front of them so that she wouldn’t start to panic. But it was far too late for that. “It’s gonna be okay,” Jack kept saying. “Just breathe.” She thought she might actually punch him in the throat and see how easy it was for him to breathe.

She knew he was driving normally, but it felt like he was going a mile an hour as he pulled into the parking ramp of Jackson Memorial, and she had the door open before the car even stopped moving, sprinting towards the sliding doors. Jack had to run to catch up with her, grabbing her arm and stopping her from plowing into someone in a wheelchair. “Calm down,” he said. “You’re going to get us kicked out of here.” He kept a firm grasp on her arm, forcing her to walk, not run. Jack pulled his phone out, calling Jackie. “We’re here,” he said. “Where are you?”

Isabelle thought she was going to jump out of her skin, was considering just breaking away from Jack and going on a tear through the hospital to find Alex, but then he pulled her towards the elevators. “Come on,” he said. “Third floor.”

The elevator took too long to come, the button lit up but no sign of movement, so they bolted for the stairs, Isabelle taking them two at a time until they got to the third floor. They burst onto the floor, looking around and seeing Jackie leaning up against the wall outside one of the patient rooms. She glanced up when she saw them, pushing off from the wall and coming to a stop in front of Isabelle, putting her hands on her shoulders. She was in scrubs and her hair was tied up and she had huge circles under her eyes.

Isabelle tried to push past her, but Jackie had a firm grasp on her shoulders and Jack was still holding onto her arm. “Isabelle, wait.”

But she couldn’t. All she could think about was getting into that room, and in a surge of adrenaline and anxiety she pushed past Jackie, shaking off Jack and darting past both of them into the nearest room.

Luca was sitting in the chair next to the bed, holding Alex’s hand. He was hooked up to an IV, his arm in a sling, and she didn’t know if it was the hospital lights or the accident, but he looked pale, a stark contrast to his normal California boy perpetual tan. His eyes were closed, his breathing even. Luca looked up as she burst in the door, sitting back. “Hey,” she whispered. “Thank God you’re here.”

“What happened?” she ground out, not able to take her eyes off of him. “Is he okay?”

“Come on.” Luca stood up, pushing Isabelle out into the hall. Once they were out of the room, the door shut behind them, Luca took a deep breath, Jackie and Jack coming to stand on either side of Isabelle. “I was working late last night and I got a call around two thirty that there were a couple of dolphins in trouble off the coast. I called Alex so that he could come with.” She swallowed, and Isabelle knew Luca well enough to know that she was going to fully blame herself for this.

She kept going. “We took a boat out with the response team. There was a dolphin and a calf caught up in all of this fishing line. It was really bad, and the baby was in trouble.” She pressed her lips together, and Isabelle could see her hands shaking, but she couldn’t reach out, couldn’t say or do anything, just had to wait for Luca to finish. “Alex got in the water. I - I told him to be careful, but he kept saying he had to save the baby.

“It was so dark and I didn’t really see what happened, but the mother got free and just went for him. He got smashed between the dolphin and the boat.” Her voice cracked. “It was bad. We couldn’t get him out of there quickly enough, not without someone else getting hurt too.”

Isabelle shut her eyes, squeezing them tight as if that would block out what was happening and where they were and what Alex was feeling right now. Of course he went after the baby. He was stubborn. She knew that it wouldn’t have mattered how many times Luca told him to be careful. Careful wasn’t in Alex’s vocabulary.

“Okay,” she finally managed to say. “Okay. Then what?”

“The rescue team got the dolphins untangled and Alex back on the boat. We called 911 on our way in so the ambulance was there when we got back.”

Isabelle turned to Jackie. “How is he?”

Jackie looked at Isabelle like she might bite her head off, chose her words carefully. “He has a shitload of broken ribs,” she said. “Partially collapsed lung. Dislocated shoulder. They’re monitoring him for internal bleeding. But he’s going to be okay, Iz,” she added quickly, seeing Isabelle’s face. “He’s fine. He’s gonna be hurting, and he won’t be going on any rescue missions for a while, but he’s going to be okay.”

As she stood there, three of her closest friends around her, reassuring her, she started to calm down. It felt like her skin was buzzing, like the nerves right underneath were vibrating, and she realized that she had been holding her breath as they spoke. “I’m going to go see him,” she said, not asking, turning and going back into the room, shutting the door behind her.

She sat down in the chair that Luca had vacated, sliding her hand into Alex’s, being careful not to disturb the IV. He didn’t wake up, didn’t move, and she leaned closer to make sure that he was still breathing. She put her head down on the bed, closing her eyes and feeling the headache building in her temples.

She had been such an asshole over the past few weeks. She knew it the entire time, but she supposed she wanted to punish Alex for forgetting about her. A lump grew in her throat, tears forming behind her eyes and a sob catching in her throat. She knew Alex hadn’t forgotten about her. But here she was, being petty, and if this had been any worse… well, she didn’t know what she would do.

“Isabelle.” She jerked her head up to see Alex looking at her, his fingers tightening around hers. “You came.”

“Of course I came, you asshole,” she said. All it took was him saying her name for her to really start crying. “What the fuck, Alex?”

He grinned at her, wincing as he did so. “I just wanted to get your attention.”

If he hadn’t been laying in a hospital bed with a ton of broken bones, she would have punched him. “Don’t even joke.” He shifted, lacing his fingers through hers and holding on tight. She put her other hand over top of his. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I won’t let go.”

* * *

It was the scariest moment of Alex’s life.

Once he got Luca’s call, he jumped up, suddenly wide awake, and pulled on sweatpants, grabbing his backpack and leaving the apartment as quietly as possible. He paused in the doorway, thinking that maybe he should tell Isabelle where he was going. No, he thought, looking at her bedroom door. She had fallen asleep with it open, and he could see her sleeping, the television running soundlessly in the background, bathing her in blue light. He didn’t want to wake her up.

The door shut quietly behind him with a click.

He sped to the school, the roads dark in front of him. There was almost no one out; it was three o’clock in the morning and the stars were bright above him. Luca had been on a couple of rescue calls so far, but they had both happened before he had moved to Miami. He had been eager to go on one, telling her multiple times that she had better call him as soon as she heard anything. He was ready for this.

Luca was waiting for him in the locker room, pulling on her wetsuit over her swimsuit. “Hurry up,” she said. “I’ll fill you in on the way out there.”

Alex threw his backpack through the open door of their office on their way out of the building and down to the dock where the response team was waiting at the boat. Luca was talking a mile a minute, getting him ready and telling him what to expect.

It was only about a ten minute ride out to where the dolphins had been spotted; they had the spotlights on, shining across the water in the pitch darkness. Alex was bouncing his leg up and down; he wasn’t nervous, just excited, but he felt like he was about to jump out of his skin. The boat slowed down once they caught sight of something in the water, pulling to a stop and bobbing in the waves.

Alex leaned over the edge, trying to make out what was going on in the water. He could see two shapes, one much smaller than the other, both of them wrapped up in the fishing line. As they drifted closer, it became obvious how serious the situation was; the rope was cutting into the calf’s skin and running through its mouth, the water around them streaked red.

Luca took control. “This is going to be more complicated than it should be since we’re in deep water,” she said, everyone gathering around her. “We’ll just get in there, use the sling to keep them as still as possible, and get out. We need to work fast and we need to get them done simultaneously.”

They used the boat’s boom to lower a sling into the water, Luca sliding into the water and guiding the mother dolphin into it, keeping her at least an arm length’s away at all time. “Be careful, Alex,” she said over her shoulder, her hair shining bright in the spotlight.

He stepped off the back of the boat, the water cold around him, and he went straight for the baby, who was thrashing around, the line cutting deeper into his skin and mouth every time he moved. He called for the light, one of the rescue crew members swiveling it over so it pointed directly at the baby. Alex worked as quickly as he could, not looking up at Luca, concentrating on untangling the line.

It happened faster than he ever could have realized. He was so focused on what he was doing that he didn’t hear Luca yelling, had just pulled the last line from the calf’s mouth when an unbelievable force slammed him up against the side of the boat. He didn’t know how long it lasted; in his head he knew that he had to get away, but he couldn’t, the dolphin hitting him once, twice, three, four times in the chest.

It was pain like he couldn’t believe; his chest felt like it was on fire, like lava sitting in his lungs every time he tried to take a breath. He could vaguely hear Luca screaming, felt her swim up beside him and push him towards the back of the boat away from the dolphins. As he was being hauled up into the boat, everything went black.

He didn’t regain consciousness until they were back on shore; at first, he thought he was still in the boat, the rocking of the ambulance speeding to the hospital similar to the movement of the ocean. Everything hurt, hitting him all at once: his shoulder, his chest, his ribs, his head. Luca was sitting next to him, holding his hand.

“I’m so sorry, Alex,” she kept saying over and over. “Shit, I’m so fucking sorry.”

He wanted to say something, to tell her that it wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t get enough air to say anything, and he drifted back into the darkness.

It wasn’t until he was at the hospital, settled into a bed, that he really came to. He didn’t know what they had done, but his arm was in a sling, his ribs bandaged. When he moved, he felt something tugging at his side, and he looked down to see a tube sticking out of his skin underneath his arm. He swallowed, looking up at the IV sending fluid down a tube and into his arm.

Luca hopped up when she saw him awake, dragging a chair over to his bed. “Alex, oh my God.”

“Hey,” he said. “You look like shit.”

She laughed shakily, pulling her knee up to her chest and glancing at the monitors behind him, beeping steadily. “So do you. Do you remember what happened?”

He shook his head, wincing as it sent a sharp stab of pain bouncing around behind his eyes. “Not really. Just bits and pieces.”

“It was… fucking awful,” she said. “I got the mother dolphin free and we were going to hold her until you were done, but somehow she got out of the sling. I’m not sure how, but she just fucking went right for you. She hit you a bunch of times, smashed you up against the boat. I didn’t…” She blinked, tears threatening to fall down her cheeks, and Alex reached over, putting his hand over his, trying not to pull on the IV. “I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to get you out of there.”

“But you did.” He knew Luca had swam right into the middle of it, pushing him out of harm’s way. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

She started crying. Her hair was still dripping wet, leaving a tiny puddle underneath her chair. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Alex squeezed her hand until she looked up at him. “I would be in a lot worse shape if it wasn’t for you, Luca.”

She turned her head, wiping her eyes on the shoulder of her sweatshirt. “What do you need? Water?”

Alex was going to ask if she knew where his phone was so that he could call Leven, but instead the name slipped out before he could stop himself. “Isabelle.”

Luca nodded. “I left my phone at the school, but I’ll go find one and call her.” She was out the door in two seconds flat.

As the door closed behind her, Alex closed his eyes. If there was any indication about how he felt about Isabelle, it was the fact that he was lying in a hospital bed, bandaged and bruised and hurting, and the only thing he wanted, the only person he wanted to see was her. His brain was fuzzy from pain and medication, but he knew it as clearly as he knew his own name.

Luca came back into the room with Jackie. “Look who I found.”

“Jesus Christ, Alex,” she said, looking like she had just run a marathon. “Fuck.”

“I know.” He could feel his eyelids getting heavy. The last thing he remembered before he fell asleep was Jackie telling him that Isabelle was on his way. She would be here when he woke up, and he held onto that thought as the darkness took over again.

* * *

Leven got the earliest flight that she could, but she got stuck in a massive storm at her connecting flight in Tennessee. She called Alex while Isabelle was sitting in his hospital room, and she tried not to eavesdrop on their conversation but it was a small room and she couldn’t help herself. She buried in her face in her phone, pretending like she was playing Hogwarts Mystery, but she could still hear Leven’s voice over the phone.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, sounding like she was a million miles away. “I’m trying to get back as fast as I can.”

“It’s okay,” Alex said. He glanced over at Isabelle, but she didn’t look up, knowing that his eyes were on her. The good thing about Leven being gone was that Isabelle had been able to stay with Alex for the rest of the week, only leaving the hospital to go home, shower, and grab new clothes, immediately heading back and planting herself at his bedside. “Fuhrman is here with me.”

Isabelle strained to hear what Leven was saying, but of course this was the moment she took to actually lower her voice. That first horrible day in the few hours after the accident had gone by in a whirlwind, Isabelle calling Alex’s parents and his siblings, letting them know what happened. It had taken everything she had to convince Nick not to just hop on a plane, Alex having given her very strict instructions to not let his family panic and immediately fly to Miami. Jack and Luca had been in and out, Jackie coming to sit with Isabelle once her shift got done.

“She wants to talk to you,” Alex said, holding his phone out to Isabelle and jerking her out of her thoughts.

Isabelle took the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey.” Leven’s familiar voice filled her air. “Thank you so much for being there with him. I’m trying to get back but it’s a fucking shitshow.”

“No problem,” Isabelle said, kicking at Alex’s hand when he tried to grab her ankle. She had her shoes kicked off, feet up on the bed, and he was clearly getting antsy being stuck in a hospital room. She grabbed the remote off the table next to her, tossing it at him.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Leven was saying. “I’m going to just get a hotel room here tonight and hope that it’s cleared up by morning.” She said a few more things, Isabelle’s mind stuck on the fact that it was even clearer now that Alex was not hers anymore. Once Leven was done talking, she gave the phone back to Alex, going back to her game and doing her best to tune him out, not wanting to hear what he was going to say.

“I have got to get out of here,” he said finally, and she looked up. He had hung up the phone, throwing it down onto the bed next to him. “I’m going crazy.”

“I know,” she said. “But you can’t.”

“You’re not my mom,” he said, pouting at her.

“No,” Jackie said, breezing through the door and coming over to Alex, lifting up the sheet to check his chest tube. “But you still have to listen to her.”

“You’re not my mom either,” he grumbled.

“The good news,” Jackie said, ignoring him completely, “is that you get to go home today.”

That shut Alex up. “Wait, what?” Isabelle said. “Are you serious?”

“I mean, I’m not a doctor, but yes.”

It took a few more hours, Alex’s doctor coming in and talking to him, Jackie taking his chest tube out, Alex wincing the entire time and practically squeezing Isabelle’s fingers into dust. It took even longer for someone to bring the discharge paperwork in, Alex signing his name over and over again. But finally they were free to leave, Alex whining the entire time that he had to sit in a wheelchair.

“Shut up,” Isabelle said, reaching around him to press the elevator button. “Just be quiet until we can get out of here, please, I’m begging you.”

He kept complaining all the way down to the parking garage, but when he did finally get out of the wheelchair, he leaned heavily on Isabelle, and she essentially had to drag him to the Jeep, opening the door and helping him inside. She was about to go over to the driver’s side when he stopped her, grabbing her arm. “Hey Fuhrman.”

Isabelle cleared her throat, very aware of how close he was as he slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her a step closer to him. “Yeah?”

Alex didn’t say anything, just dropped his head onto her shoulder. “Thank you. For being here.” She hesitated for a second, putting her arms around him gingerly, not wanting to hurt him more than he already was. “Hug me back,” he said. “It’s fine, I promise.”

So she did, hugging him tightly and feeling him breathe against her. “Anything for you, Alex,” she said softly. She didn’t even really need him to hear her; she just had to say it. “I’d do anything for you.”

Alex didn’t give any indication that he had heard her, didn’t say anything, but he did tighten his arms, his breath falling on her neck. She heard him start to say something, felt him say her name against her neck, not Fuhrman but her real name, but he stopped and she didn’t push him.

It felt good to be home, but it felt even better to have Alex back in her life. It felt like everything was back to normal, like he was her best friend again and not just her roommate. He was stuck in his bed or on the couch for another couple of days, going back and forth between the living room and his bedroom, and she sat with him, watching hours and hours of reality television and bringing him water or Hot Cheetos or his phone charger. The first night they were home she helped him into bed around seven o’clock, waiting for him to get under the blanket before she stood up.

“Where are you going?” he said, and she turned around to look at him, his eyes narrowed at her.

“Um… to my room?”

“Why?”

She didn’t know what to say. “I know you’re on drugs, but you’re really not making any sense.”

Alex moved closer to the wall, wincing as he made just enough room in the bed for her. “Stay with me.” She just blinked at him. Even though they used to sleep in each other’s beds all the time, they hadn’t lately for obvious reasons, not since the night of Jackie’s birthday party. She had taken incredible care not to get too close to Alex, feeling like she would do something she couldn’t take back if she did. It was a glaring gap in their relationship, because they had always been very physical people around each other, even before things moved away from friendship and into something more. “Please?”

It’s not like Isabelle had ever been able to say no to him; this shouldn’t be surprising to her. She hit the lightswitch, flipping the lights off, and gingerly got into bed next to him. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, moving as slowly and carefully as possible.

“You’re not going to.”

The television was on in the background, the volume low and blue light filling the room. Isabelle didn’t think that she would ever fall asleep, not when it felt like every muscle in her body was aching to roll over and curl up into Alex’s side like she used to do. But somehow she fell asleep and somehow in the middle of the night they fell into the same thing they always did. When she woke up the next morning, she had her face buried in his neck, an arm across him. She pulled back slowly, not wanting to wake him up, and she had just managed to roll over and was feeling around on the ground for her phone when the door burst open.

Alex jerked upright. “Shit,” he said, pressing his arm against his ribs. “Fuck, that hurt.”

“Hey baby,” Leven said, backlit by the sun coming in the living room windows. “I finally made it.” She seemed to pay no mind to the fact that Isabelle was currently in bed with her boyfriend; a situation like this in the Nicole or Kristy eras would have started World War Three, but Leven didn’t seem to care.

Isabelle managed to roll out of bed, grabbing her phone on the way down and slipping out of the room, closing the door behind her and and darting into her room. She sat down on her bed, her heart beating a mile a minute. Nothing had happened, but for some reason she felt like something had, like they had done something wrong.

* * *

“You know what we need?” Jackie said to Alex one Saturday afternoon. He had been out of the hospital for a couple of weeks, and for the most part he was feeling much better. The only problem was that he hadn’t been cleared to go back to work, and he was going stir crazy in the apartment. He had been spending more and more time with Jackie when the rest of his friends were at work, since she seemed to be working more weekends and overnights lately.

“What’s that?”

“A Halloween party.”

With all of the excitement, Alex had totally forgotten that Halloween was coming up next weekend. “You think?”

“If you’re up for it.”

Jackie loved a good party, and she could really go all out. That was definitely what Alex needed right now. “Hell yes, I’m up for it,” he said, and she grinned at him.

“I thought I would have to convince you,” she said. “Now we just have to convince Iz.”

“No,” Isabelle said as soon as she came through the front door and saw them sitting at the kitchen counter, waiting for it. “Whatever it is the two of you want, the answer is no.”

“Come on,” Alex said, pouting at her. “You haven’t even heard what we want yet.”

“Okay.” Isabelle crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes at them. “Then what is it that you want?”

Even after Leven got back, Alex couldn’t bring himself to leave Isabelle, spending all of his time at the apartment so that he would be there waiting for her when she got done with work. There was no more sleeping over at Leven’s apartment, no more weekend trips or Saturday brunches or happy hours. Leven came over to see him, but she was busier than usual, trying to make up for the time the clinic had lost when she was travelling.

Alex and Isabelle hadn’t talked about what had happened over the past few weeks, hadn’t talked about the shitty things they had said to each other or the fact that they had been going out of their way to ignore each other. They didn’t need to, Alex thought, and he knew Isabelle felt the same way. He knew that she was sorry, and he knew that she knew he was too. He didn’t need her to say it.

Luca hadn’t been around at all, although that’s not something that Alex brought up to Isabelle. She had been texting him every day, checking on him and apologizing over and over, no matter how many times Alex told her that he didn’t blame her, that she was the reason he had only broken a couple of ribs. He didn’t know if something had happened between her and Isabelle, but he sure wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. Not when Isabelle was back sleeping in his bed every night.

It always happened the same way: she would help him into his room, pushing him into bed and asking him if he needed anything before backing out the door, shutting the lights off behind her. And every night she ended up there, whether he asked her to from the start or she snuck in after he fell asleep. Sometimes he looked at her when she fell asleep first, her arm slung over his chest and her breath warm on his neck. A couple of mornings he had to stop himself from kissing her, remembering at the very last second that that wasn’t something that they did anymore.

All he knew for sure was that when his life was flashing before his eyes, it was Isabelle he wanted to see.

“A Halloween party?” She folded her arms across her chest, glaring at Jackie. “No way. Alex needs to rest.”

“I’m fine!” he protested. “Really!” He was barely even lying; he felt pretty good for the most part, still a little sore in his ribs but perfectly capable of playing a few games of beer pong. Isabelle ignored him completely, raising an eyebrow at Jackie.

“He’ll be fine for one night, Iz,” Jackie said. “I promise.”

It took another few hours of wheedling, promising Isabelle that he was just fun and one night couldn’t hurt him, but finally she agreed. “Okay,” she said, sighing and blowing out a big rush of pot smoke, waving it towards the open balcony door. “Fine. If it’ll stop you two from harassing me.”

“Yes!” Alex high-fived Jackie behind Isabelle’s back, both of them trying to look as innocent as possible when she whipped around, still glaring at them.

He was lying in bed next to Isabelle that night, almost asleep, when she said his name. “I’m glad you didn’t die,” she said softly when he turned to look at her. The window was open, and he could hear the sound of the waves outside, crashing against the rocks and sand, rolling back and forth.

“I am too,” he said, so softly that he was sure the ocean would drown him out. When she fell asleep a few minutes later, he dropped a kiss onto her forehead. “I am too, Fuhrman.”

They were lucky that Halloween fell on a Friday, Jackie working overnight the night before and falling asleep on their sofa when she got back to the building at six in the morning. Isabelle went to work extra early so that she could try to sneak out early, and Alex ended up waking Jackie up around one o’clock so that they could go to the liquor store.

Jackie drove even though the liquor store was only a couple of blocks away, not trusting Alex to be able to make it there and back, especially not once they were loaded down with cases of beer. “So,” she said, once she had him trapped in the Jeep, turning around as they backed out of Alex’s parking spot in the garage. “What’s going on with you and Isabelle?”

He knew Jackie knew everything, but he was still going to pretend like he had no idea what she was talking about. “Huh?”

Jackie gave him a look, waiting for the automatic gate to open, the sun shining into the garage inch by inch as it creaked upwards, blinding them. “You know.”

Alex sighed, rubbing the back of his neck and sticking his arm out the window into the hot sun, grabbing the top of the Jeep. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not sleeping together anymore though.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Jackie…” Alex gestured to his bad shoulder. He was still wearing the sling for a couple of hours every day until he felt a little bit stronger. “I’m not sleeping with anyone these days.”

She whipped around to look at him with clear disregard for the fact that she was driving on a busy road. Alex reached over, grabbing the wheel. “Not even Leven?”

“Jesus, Jackie,” he said, reacting both to her question and to the fact that she had just narrowly avoided driving up onto the sidewalk. “No, not with Leven.”

He didn’t really know why that was, other than the fact that everything had changed since the accident and this was no exception. It felt almost like Leven was scared to touch him, like she was afraid she might hurt him, just like Isabelle had been. Add that to the fact that Leven was a real grown-up with a nice apartment and a job that she had to get to in the mornings, and he hadn’t been spending more than a couple of hours with her at a time.

“But she’s still your girlfriend?”

Alex cleared his throat, wondering if his ears were turning as red as he thought they were. “Yes.” He was saved from having to explain himself any longer as she attempted to parallel park in front of the liquor store, an adventure that ended in the two of them screaming at each other and Alex practically yanking Jackie out of the passenger seat so he could just do it himself.

Alex wasn’t going to admit this to Jackie - he could barely even admit it to himself - but he had started having doubts about his relationship with Leven. Not because of Leven, but because of the fact he couldn’t get out of his head: that when everything was going wrong, when he thought he might die, it wasn’t Leven’s face that had flashed into his brain.

He needed Isabelle. If there was anything he knew for a fact, it was that. He didn’t know if he could say the same thing about Leven. And he had had more than enough time to sit in his room, stare at the ceiling, and think about that.

He tried to push all of those thoughts out of his mind as they got ready for the party, Jackie taking charge and giving him things to do. By the time Isabelle got home around six o’clock, the apartment looked like Halloween had thrown up all over it. There were orange and black streamers lacing the ceilings, paper bats and pumpkins and ghosts taped to the walls, bead curtains filling all the doorways, and candy everywhere. The candy had been Alex’s main job, which he had taken care of by throwing fistfuls of it in every direction. Probably not what Jackie had intended when she told him to put it all out, but he got the job done, that was for damn sure.

All of the usual suspects were coming, people starting to trickle in around eight o’clock. Isabelle and Jackie had spent two hours in Isabelle’s room getting ready, although none of them dressed up, having spent too much time organizing the party and completely forgetting to get costumes. “What are you supposed to be?” Luca asked Alex after she hugged him as tightly as he could stand it.

“Oh,” he said, looking down. “I’m a guy who survived a dolphin attack.” Luca looked for a second like she might cry, and Alex laughed, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Luca, stop, I’m just kidding.”

There was beer and Jack and weed and lots of candy, although for once Alex wasn’t drinking since he was still on medication that he wasn’t allowed to mix with alcohol. Instead he got high on the couch with Leven and Luca, tilting his head back and blowing smoke rings out the open balcony door. He tried to concentrate on what Leven was saying, but he found himself looking around for Isabelle, keeping his eyes on her as she played beer pong out on the balcony with Jack and Dayo and Mark.

* * *

Isabelle was trying to keep her distance from Alex. Alcohol was not going to mix well with the thoughts that Madeline had firmly planted in her brain.

She was in love with Alex.

She was going to try her best not to drunkenly blurt that out in front of him.

Isabelle had thought Madeline was crazy. She had made that pretty clear. Of course she wasn’t in love with Alex. She loved him, absolutely. But being in love with someone was a very different thing. It was wanting to call them as soon as something good happened to you. It was needing them when something bad happened. It was knowing that you couldn’t get any luckier than falling asleep next to them at night and waking up next to them in the morning. It was doing anything you had to to make your way back to them when the two of you fell apart. It was feeling like a piece of your heart was away from your body. It was knowing with certainty that you were a better person because of their presence in your life.

So yeah. She was unquestionably in love with her best friend.

She really hated it when Madeline was right.

In the couple of weeks since Alex had come home from the hospital, she thought about it a lot. Clearly, she had blown her chance; Alex had Leven and she had Luca. She wasn’t exactly sure when her feelings for Alex had turned into something more than friendship, but she knew that she should have been honest with him that day on the beach, should have told him that he meant more to her than just a friend with benefits. But she didn’t, and now here they were.

She broke up with Luca anyways.

Because Luca was Luca, it was entirely a non-issue. Apparently she, like Madeline, had known the entire time. “You do whatever you need to do to be happy,” she told Isabelle. “Just don’t wait too long.”

What she needed to do, what she was trying to accomplish by ending her relationship, she honestly wasn’t sure. It’s not like Alex was single; she couldn’t just profess her feelings in some grand gesture and they would ride off into the sunset together. She didn’t even tell him that she was single, choosing to keep that close to the vest until she could figure out what she was doing.

So instead of getting drunk with Alex, she stayed out on the balcony, playing beer pong and chasing shots with water and trying to keep her wits about her, all the while staying as far away from Alex as she could get.

She didn’t mean to get so drunk, didn’t realize how drunk she actually was until she had to go to the bathroom, stumbling through her room in the dark and sitting down on her bed because she needed to take a break or she was going to throw up.

When the door creaked open, she was expecting Luca or Jackie. She certainly wasn’t expecting Leven. “Hey,” she said, glancing behind her, the noise of the party filtering through the open door. “Can I come in?”

Isabelle’s head was spinning, and she just nodded, Leven coming to sit next to her on the bed, mercifully keeping the lights off. “What’s up?” Isabelle managed, taking a deep breath.

Leven touched Isabelle’s leg, and she looked up at her, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t throw up Fireball all over the person who signed her paychecks. “It’s about Alex,” Leven said, and Isabelle was immediately brought back to the days of Nicole and Kristy. She could have sworn Leven was different, thought that she was too mature for games and too sure of herself to be intimidated, especially by someone like Isabelle. But here she was again, right back in the same damn place she always found herself, trying to defend herself to one of Alex’s girlfriends. “You need to go for it,” Leven said.

Wait, what? She just stared at Leven, mouth slightly open, unsure if the alcohol was rendering her mute or whether it was just pure shock. “Go… for what?” she asked slowly, not convinced that she had heard her right to begin with.

“Alex,” Leven said, a touch impatiently. “I’m not an idiot, Isabelle. I see the way that he looks at you. I’ve heard him talk about you.”

“I… he’s my-”

“Best friend. I know. But the truth is…” She sighed heavily, glancing towards the door, shadows visible underneath, coming closer and passing by. “He was never mine. He has always been yours.” She stood up, putting her hand on Isabelle’s shoulder. “You should do something about that.”

What the hell was going on? And how had so many people been able to see something that Isabelle herself had just figured out existed?

And what on earth was she supposed to do about it?

* * *

Alex wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was pretty sure Leven had just broken up with him.

The party was still raging on in the apartment, but Alex had needed desperately to get out of there, well aware of the fact that he was so focused on Isabelle that someone (Jackie) was getting suspicious. He kept catching her eye, knowing what she wanted him to do, but he couldn’t. She had a girlfriend, for one, and so did he.

So he grabbed his girlfriend, pulling her into his room and pushing her up against the door, locking it behind them, but before he could do anything, she stopped him. “Alex.” Leven cleared her throat, running her hand along his jaw and looking at him like she was trying to memorize his face. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this anymore.”

Alex felt his heart drop into his stomach. “What are you talking about?”

“You and me. This. Us.” Alex hadn’t been broken up with in years, and he wasn’t really sure what he should be feeling right now, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t relief. Leven mistook the look on his face for something else thankfully. “I know this is really cliche, but it’s not you.”

“Okay.” He searched his brain, trying to find the right thing to say. “What is it?”

Leven raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t know?”

His heart was pounding out of his chest. “What are you talking about?”

She leaned forward, kissing his cheek and lingering there for a moment, her eyelashes brushing his face and the smell of her perfume floating in the air around him. “You’re smart,” she said. “You’ll figure it out.” She squeezed his arm once before pushing him aside and opening the door. She turned to look back at him. “Just don’t wait too long.”

What the hell was that about? What sort of cryptic comments was she making?

Alex sat down on his bed, leaning his head back against the wall and trying to digest what had just happened. She was clearly talking about Isabelle, but what was he supposed to do? Tell her that he had feelings for her? Tell her that it was a mistake to end things? Tell her that he should have dated her years ago?

Yeah, that might be sufficient. But what about Luca?

He ended up falling asleep, exhausted from pain pills and pot and the weight of what his life had become. Jackie came in at some point, was trying to tell him something, but he just rolled over, pulling the blankets over his head and falling back asleep immediately.

Fortunately for Alex, Jackie didn’t give up that easily.

She was waiting for him in the kitchen the next morning, sitting at the counter and glaring at him as he stumbled out of his room, yawning. “I would ask you what you’re doing here, but that seems pretty pointless by now,” he said, grabbing a water bottle out of the fridge and downing half of it in one gulp. “Are you here to help me clean?”

“No,” she snapped at him. “I’m here to tell you that you’re an idiot.”

He sighed. “Why this time?”

“Isabelle broke up with Luca.” Of all the things that Jackie could say, that was the one he least expected to hear, and he slopped water all down his front, widening his eyes at her.

“Who did what now?”

“Alex.” Jackie said, pinning him down with her gaze. “You and I both know why.”

Alex whipped around, glancing at Isabelle’s bedroom door, wide open. Her room was dark, and she was clearly not in her bed. “Where-”

“Running,” Jackie said. “She left like five minutes ago.”

Count on Isabelle to go for a run the morning after a party, even when she was hungover and holding onto only a few hours of sleep. “Goddammit,” Alex muttered, dropping the now empty water bottle onto the counter, vaulting over it and sprinting into his room to grab his running shoes. It would take too long to drive to the beach once you factored in finding parking, and he had far too much nervous energy coursing through his veins to sit still for another second. “Thank you, Jackie!” he yelled over his shoulder, the door falling shut behind him with a slam.

He was antsy as he waited for the elevator, jamming the down button ten times as if that would make the elevator come faster. Eventually he abandoned the notion altogether, sprinting down the stairs and taking them two or three at a time, pushing through the door once he got to the street, the sun practically blinding him.

He was really glad he didn’t drink last night, he thought as he took off down the sidewalk. That would make this a whole lot more difficult.

Alex knew the route Isabelle always took, a straight shot down to the ocean from their apartment and down along the beach. It was the same way she always went when she was running; if she could be by the ocean, she would take that route in a heartbeat. His ribs were aching, his chest tight, and he knew he would be paying for this tomorrow, but he couldn’t think about that right now, putting one foot in front of the other until he hit sand.

He stopped only for a second, shading his eyes to look around, and he could see her down by the shore, making her way past the pier. She was a better runner than him, but he was much taller, and he caught up to her quickly.

“Fuhrman!” She didn’t hear him, her earbuds stuffed in her ears, and he sprinted to get in front of her, whirling around to stop her.

“Alex?” She pulled her headphones out, letting them fall around her neck. “What the hell? You’re not supposed to be running!”

She was right, and he thought he might throw up on the sand. He bent over, putting his hands on his knees and trying to gulp in as much air as he could. “I know. But I needed to talk to you.”

“Okay,” she said. “Talk.”

* * *

Whenever she needed to think, whenever she really needed to clear her head, she went for a run, and this morning was no exception.

After Leven had left her room the night before, she had sat there for a few moments, stunned. She stayed there long enough that Jackie eventually came to find her, sitting down and putting a hand on her leg. “Are you okay?”

“I’m… fine,” Isabelle said, still reeling from what had just happened. “I broke up with Luca,” she blurted, finally saying the words out loud, even if they weren’t to the right person.

Jackie’s mouth dropped open. “What? When?”

“Weeks ago,” Isabelle said, sighing and starting to lay back until she realized that wasn’t going to make her churning stomach feel any better. She pushed herself upright again. “Right after Alex got out of the hospital.”

She couldn’t remember what Jackie said, knew only that she was going to pass out from intoxication and confusion and pure exhaustion. She woke up the next morning with a dry mouth and a pounding head, things not any clearer in the bright of day.

The last person she expected to see on her run was Alex, who was absolutely one hundred percent not supposed to be doing any sort of physical activity. He had clearly sprinted the entire way from the apartment, leaning over and putting his hands on his knees. “Just… one sec,” he managed, and she put her palm on his back, feeling the warmth of his skin through his t-shirt.

“Alex, I-”

“I love you,” he blurted out, like this was new information to her.

“I know,” she said, frowning at him. “What’s going on? You’re being weird.”

“No,” he said, standing up and looking at her, his eyes bluer than the ocean stretching out behind him, bluer than the sky above them, and she felt for a few moments like she might drown in them, like she might forget where she was and who she was talking to and blurt out everything she had been feeling.

“I…” She didn’t know what to say. “What?”

“Can we sit down?” Alex was still breathing heavily, and Isabelle was worried he was going to pass out. She sank down onto the sand, realizing quickly that they were in almost the exact same spot that they were when he told her they had to stop sleeping together, just a few paces down the beach. Alex collapsed next to her, pulling his shirt over his head and letting it puddle on the ground next to them.

“Listen, Isabelle,” he said, and she was - the second he used her first name she knew he was serious. “I know this is… out of the blue, and I know that I’ve had actual years to say this to you, but you know me.” He shrugged sheepishly, running a hand along the back of his neck like he always did when he was nervous. “I need a little help sometimes.”

“I still don’t…” She cleared her throat. “I still don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I’m in love with you.”

Her heart stopped, and she was sure that she was imagining this, that she was still drunk and it was all just an alcohol-induced dream. She was going to wake up in a few minutes in the apartment she shared with her best friend, who she was hopelessly in love with. They would go get breakfast and she would go on pretending like she didn’t feel the way she did.

But it wasn’t a dream. It was real, and he was really sitting next to her saying these words.

“Are you… high?”

Alex laughed. “No. For once.” He leaned forward, retying one of his shoe laces. “I don’t think I realized it for a long time, but I am. I’m in love with everything you are.” He looked up at her, and she couldn’t move or breathe or speak. “You’re the one I want.”

“I…” Her mouth was dry, and she knew she was just repeating herself over and over again, not saying much of anything. “What about Leven?”

“It’s a long story,” Alex said. “But the short version is that we broke up.” What? Isabelle wanted to say. When? What the hell had happened last night? “Isabelle.” Alex moved his hand over a couple of inches, putting it on top of hers. “I was looking for you in every girl I met.”

She wanted to say something, anything, wanted to tell him that she felt the same way, that she had had those feelings for a long time even if she didn’t know how to express it. The words got tangled in her head, refusing to come out.

Alex looked nervous as hell. “You don’t have to say anything. I know this is a lot. I just couldn’t go another second without telling you.” He got up, dusting off the seat of his shorts and grabbing his shirt off the ground, shaking it out and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll see you back at the apartment.”

He was halfway down the beach before Isabelle finally came to her senses. She jumped up, sprinting after him and grabbing his arm, swinging herself around to stand in front of him, just like he had done to her.

“Wait,” she said. Leven’s words flashed through her mind: “He has always been yours.” She could hear Luca telling her not to wait anymore. “I’m in love with you too, you idiot.”

For once, Alex was the one stunned into silence. She smirked at him, drawing pleasure from the fact that she had just done to him what he had done to her. “What about Luca?” he asked, his voice low.

She shrugged. “We broke up.”

“When?”

“Weeks ago.” She kicked at a mound of sand under her shoe, not sure if she could explain to him why she kept it a secret. She didn’t know if she could even explain it to herself.

“And you…” He repeated her words slowly, like he didn’t believe her. “You’re in love with me.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

Count on Alex to be difficult about it. She drew in a deep breath of air, the salt stinging her lungs and the air crisp around them. “More than sure,” she said softly.

Alex closed the gap in between them so quickly that it took her by surprise, sliding his hands along her jaw to the back of her neck and kissing her, pushing her backwards a couple of steps. It was just like she remembered it, his mouth warm as it moved against hers, the flat planes of his stomach hard under her hands as she pulled him closer, his breath coming out in puffs between kisses, the feeling in her stomach as she realized that this was what she had been missing all her life.

“I love you,” Alex kept saying, pulling back every few seconds to repeat himself. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She smiled against his mouth, feeling the corners of his lips turn up underneath hers. They could have stayed like that for minutes or hours or even a few sunlit days, were it not for Jackie.

“Get a room,” Isabelle heard her yell. Alex and Isabelle broke apart, looking around to see Jackie parked on the sand, eating a mini Snickers bar.

“What are you doing here?” Alex asked.

“You thought I was going to miss all the fun?” Jackie snorted. “Absolutely not.”

“You’re such a creeper.”

“I creep because I care, Alexander.”

Isabelle sat down next to Jackie, pulling Alex with her, and the three of them stayed like that, looking out at the ocean. The two of them bickered around her, but she barely even noticed, instead thinking about the fact that six months ago, they had no idea what they were doing or where they were going and now, somehow, they had all of this.

She couldn’t ask for anything more.


End file.
